


Individual Servings

by Monopteros



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: A More Complex Version Of "There's Only One Bed", A Series of Unfortunate Events (Not The Books), Awkwardness, Basically Short Rambles or Mini-Fics Cause I Forgot To Plan For This, Bits of angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Charity Date Auctions, Crack Treated Seriously, Family Fluff, Gambling, Gen, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Separation Anxiety, Soundwave Week 2020, Telepathy, Temporary truces, Totally Unpolished, Transformers Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, Vaguely Grotesque Descriptions of Unpleasant Art
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:21:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25099834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monopteros/pseuds/Monopteros
Summary: It's Soundwave Week, and I'm not gonna let it go by without trying to get *something* in for each day. Some may be longer than others. No beta reading involved.Day 1: LoyaltyDay 2: CreationDay 3: MisadventureDay 4: CassettesDay 5: ReconnectionDay 6: ????????Day 7: Redemption
Relationships: Prowl/Soundwave
Comments: 30
Kudos: 48





	1. Loyalty

**Author's Note:**

> I'm already working on a long outline to a different fic dealing with Soundwave's loyalty to Megatron and what could break it, so I decided to poke at his concepts of it in a different time instead. Maybe get down some worldbuilding concepts while I'm at it.
> 
> Definitely not my usual fic style, but it does well enough.

He steps through the Pit gate and reminds himself that he is in Sistex this time.

Technically, the name of the city is unimportant information. He will be wherever he is at any point in time, whether he knows the location's name or not, because he doesn't have a choice. The owner does not give him one, and as the carefully painted marks on his armor remind him, he does not have permission to ask for one. If he is good at what he does, he may eventually afford weaponry, small pleasures, and simple freedoms--just last month, he finally earned the right to claim his own cell--but permission to pick his encounters and their settings? Never.

He is seen as a mere tool, functioning solely to make money and a name for his owner, and while a tool may be upgraded, it cannot choose the circumstances surrounding its usage. The _owner_ chooses, arranging battles he thinks his fighter stands a chance of winning in the hopes of moving up the circuit.

The grandest and most well-known Pits are in Kaon, of course; everyone knows that. But very few start out there, and only the best of the rest survive long enough to be granted the right to make an appearance there. Most mechs don't get to make more than one.

Sistex is nothing, mostly notable for not being notable at all. From his perspective, it's more or less indistinguishable from the last four places. Like them, Sistex is undersized and poorly lit. Previously spilled energon slowly seeps into the scarred, cracked metal beneath his feet, just as it does everywhere else he's been. The bleachers are a little less rusty, but he does not get to use them, and so that makes no difference to him. His place is down below, amid the piles of broken frames and other detritus he is all but guaranteed to eventually join.

He memorizes the city's name not because it matters to him, but because it _doesn't._ Sistex, like Polyhex, Burthov, Esserlon, and Rodion, is not home. He is not one of its citizens. Those mechs crowd the seats, cheering and clapping and stomping for their favorites while he stands and stares his own death in the face.

A few come specifically to see him--they've tagged along often enough he can taste their minds from afar, recognizing them without ever needing to meet them in person--but he knows they don't care. Not like they should. Not like they care about each other. They do not love him, and they do not protect him. They cherish only what he can do, thrilled by the skill with which he dismantles his enemies for their entertainment. Were he to fall, they would merely sigh and find another capable of delivering the carnage they require. They might even become fans of his killer, providing the mech made a good show of tearing him limb from limb.

And the officials who decry these games in public but sit next to the owners and Pit bosses in special viewing boxes... Well. The less said about them, the better.

Sistex and its people hold nothing for him, and he, in turn, feels nothing for them.

It is possible, he thinks, looking to the opposite gate and the black and silver feline snarling at him from behind it, that he does not _have_ a home. His earliest clear memory is of the owner seizing him off the street and giving him gladiator's marks. Everything before that is a spark-straining blur of colors and sounds, and he does not know where in them he might be able to find himself as he once was.

If he was anyone at all, that is. He doubts his owner would have gotten away with picking him up and turning him into a piece of property if he had been; he's never met an opponent he recognized as someone he once felt sitting in the stands. Even the nearly deactivated mechs who agree to serve as "training dummies" or take part in pre-show maneuver demonstrations in exchange for currency and fuel can lay claim to a place of origin: Nyon, the Dead End, Slaughter City.

Him? He doesn't know his own _name,_ let alone where he came from. Nobody does. The owner nicknamed him after he made his first handler pass out with a concentrated burst of noise. Had to call the newest wannabe star _something._ Crowds wouldn't get fired up chanting "That New One With The Tentacles."

Soundwave. Another reminder that he is someone else's property. Another reminder that his value rests in what he can do, not who he is.

It doesn't matter. It would have been the same with any name the owner could've chosen for him, and it's nice enough as names go. Better than Overload, at least. Nobody snickers when they say it, and it's better than getting saddled with a batch-style designation. He can live with it.

In fact, he can live with _all_ of these things. The ability to make that decision means his mind still functions. It's the one and only thing separating him from a drone constructed to fill the same role, and he will do whatever it takes to remain in control of it. If that means fighting to the death, fine; he would gladly die to avoid giving it up. The cities, the crowds, the owner--none of them can have it. They don't deserve it. They can have his fists, his energon, his metal, and the pulsing of his spark, but none of them can have _him._

It is a lonely life.

Is there anyone in all of Cybertron who is worthy? It seems impossible.

That does not stop the thought clutching his spark in icy fingers when he lays in his cell with a festering wound and wonders if anyone would truly mourn his loss. It still crawls into his hollowed-out struts and howls when he finds himself burning to crush someone in his coils without killing them. It still pushes him to remain ruthless and steady, ever focused on victory, even when his frame is begging him to let go and rest. 

For just such a mech, he would voluntarily go to all four corners of Cybertron and beyond. He'd offer perfect, unending devotion, readily sacrificing person and possession to protect them. They'd be given all that he is if they want it. Frame, spark, thoughts, feelings--all theirs. Someone capable of seeing and understanding him as a Cybertronian instead of a mere tool deserves nothing less.

...But it is only a dream. Nothing beautiful can come from these hellholes. Here, there is just death.

The gate opens.


	2. Creation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't what I first wanted to do for the prompt, but then a single word came to me and I knew what I had to write. Hope you enjoy getting to it as much as I did.

Soundwave never tired of watching Buzzsaw in action.

Once, long ago, the temperamental little avian had attempted to take his simmering anger out on an unusually speedy Decepticon who was too fast to hit at close range--and worse, too fast to be dodged. Buzzsaw's recovery from that incident was a more a matter of luck than of medical skill; there'd been very little left of him for Hook to fix. (Naturally, Soundwave made sure that there was even less of Buzzsaw's attacker. Few mechs harmed his deployers and lived to regret their actions.)

When Buzzsaw awoke, Soundwave quietly suggested he find a more suitable outlet for his fury. Murdering Autobots was all well and good, but Decepticons were another thing altogether. They would do whatever they thought they could get away with when they believed Soundwave wasn't looking, not inclined to show mercy or accept surrender, and every one killed was a blow to their cause. Why do the enemy's work for them? No, it simply did not do for Buzzsaw to vent his frustrations on his fellow soldiers.

It began with chunks and sheets of scrap metal no one would miss. Laser fire, pecking, scratching, slicing--all were valid forms of attack when it came to obliterating the abandoned materials in front of him. Rumble and Frenzy cheered him on, rejoicing in the vicious destruction; it was their idea to paint the pieces in the colors of whichever bots had inspired the latest round.

Soundwave didn't know all that much about art outside the realm of music. Still, he could recognize when something stirred feelings in his spark. He'd picked up the red and yellow sheet Buzzsaw peeled into ribbons after Blaster made a fool of them and run a careful fingertip over the thin curls of metal, watching with interest as they bent beneath the pressure and sprang back into place after it passed. There was something delicate yet dangerous about it all, he thought; he could crush it underfoot if he wanted, but would most likely get a handful of these sharp slivers jammed into his seams. He could crush them with a hand, but doing so risked damage to vital wiring and soft mesh.

It reminded him of his deployers. So many underestimated them, taking their small size for granted. Tiny they might be, compared to the average mech, but Laserbeak presented a far more difficult target and could slip through spaces that would destroy a jet in pursuit of an enemy. Ravage still had a kill count that at least two-thirds of the Decepticon army couldn't match. Even the mech who'd nearly destroyed Buzzsaw was no match for the quakes Rumble could produce, which was how they'd caught him in the first place. Overconfident handling of either the ruined piece of metal or his deployers could both lead to great harm.

Hearing this, Buzzsaw lit up physically _and_ figuratively. Something Soundwave had said lit a blaze inside of him--Soundwave could _feel_ it roll through his deployer, white-hot determination exploding into being with a shock of inspiration akin to having one's wires touched by someone crackling with excess charge. The borrowed sensation burned as it raced through Soundwave's circuits in a faded echo of its journey through Buzzsaw's, but he didn't mind; it was new and glorious to behold, and he would not have traded the experience even for the grayed out frame of Optimus Prime himself. Deaths happened every day. He'd seen that firsthand in the Pits.

The act of creation, though... that was a rare and cherished blessing, even before the war. Now, drowning in chaos and slaughter, he knew he would do absolutely anything to keep his deployer's fire alive. He--no, _Cybertron_ \--could not afford to lose it.

Soundwave did not question Buzzsaw's motives when the mech began picking over the empty shells on the battlefield after a victory, tapping and pecking at gray metal in a search for something special, or when Buzzsaw asked the twins to pick up and carry chosen bits and bodies back to base with them. He didn't complain when Buzzsaw welded Autobot carcasses into action poses and carefully peeled away weaponry and armor to showcase the weak cores inside, or when their metal was bent and melted and twisted and sliced into the shapes of monsters taken straight from Cybertronian myth.

They were beautiful objects, these sculptures. Buzzsaw tore new life and new meaning free of the cold, inhospitable shells of those who had devoted themselves to stagnation. It was the Decepticon cause realized on a personal scale, and Soundwave was not the only one to see that.

He was, however, the only one allowed to watch Buzzsaw work.

He never missed an opportunity to do just that. Even when his duties made it impossible to achieve in person, cameras recorded every moment of the process from at least two angles, banking the footage for when he finally secured a few precious free hours.

Today, he'd been able to make time to sit across the room from Buzzsaw and watch as his deployer skillfully modified a severed hand taken from one of the Autobots' finest sharpshooters. Soundwave expected the damage to be temporary; no doubt Ratchet had already started on the attachment of a replacement hand. A couple of months of healing time and physical therapy and Bluestreak would be back in action. Still, a victory was a victory, no matter how small, and his deployer was entitled to celebrate it as he pleased.

Buzzsaw's latest line of sculptures involved transforming pieces taken from powerful opponents into the weaponry for which they were best known. One of Wheeljack's winglets, torn off at the base, became a pair of small swords. Warpath's foot found new life as a tiny but functional cannon able to fire pellets made of one of Warpath's knees. A chunk of shin armor and rubber tubing ripped loose from Slingshot turned into, well... a slingshot. (Frenzy stubbornly argued that it didn't count because Slingshot actually favored guns, but Soundwave appreciated the joke.)

At first, Soundwave had thought Buzzsaw might change Bluestreak's fingers into some sort of blowpipe mechanism. It seemed a reasonable choice when he saw one of them being welded into a rigid tube and hollowed out; they were projectile weapons and required excellent control. Now that the bottom two had been folded into a grip, however, and Buzzsaw was in the process of bending and splitting the third into a trigger--

Soundwave bobbed with soundless laughter, a smiling face lighting up his visor as he pulsed pride and affection in his deployer's direction.

_Handgun._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Definitely have an idea for tomorrow, providing this headache passes. Can't miss an opportunity to be self-indulgent, and Soundwave Week is chock full of them. Now, if only I could figure out what to do for "redemption" on Day 7... that one still eludes me.


	3. Misadventure

Did he _want_ to get stuck here like this?

No.

Is he nevertheless stuck here like this?

Yes.

Does he _mind_ being stuck here like this?

More or less.

Soundwave clears the rock dust out of his vents with a hard puff of air and continues drilling through stone and dirt with both data cables, ignoring the dull ache in his tanks and the weakness in his limbs. A warm back presses against his own to help brace him, safe from the sharp spines he'd retracted out of a rusty sense of etiquette. Unfamiliar doors rub against his arms, mainly because there is nowhere else for them to go when sandwiched this way; he tries to keep as still as possible to avoid elbowing them. He and his cellmate aren't locked in battle, and they've been begrudgingly helpful during this shared ordeal, so there's no need to shatter any windows.

The plus side of this constant closeness, if there is such a thing when it comes to being locked up for days by strange creatures even bigger than themselves, is that they've had little difficulty communicating.

It _should've_ been harder than this. He's certain their captors meant that to be the case; everything about their situation suggests the aliens wanted them to struggle to understand one another. Their comms are jammed, and their datapads have gone missing. A crack running diagonally across his 'face' has rendered it unusable. Neither of them are willing to risk plugging into each other, and talking via hand language is next to impossible; there's next to no room to maneuver here.

Their cell is _so_ small and incompatible with Soundwave's unusual proportions, in fact, that he cannot comfortably sit on the floor or bend his arms past a certain point without being forced to twist into painful positions and scrape himself raw on the walls. How fortunate he is that his cellmate is smaller, sturdier, smart enough to keep his mouth shut, _and most importantly,_ almost impossible to embarrass--what little rest he's been able to get has involved treating the mech's shoulders like the seat of a chair. (Luckier still was his decision to leave the twins back on the Nemesis when setting out on this ill-fated trip. One glimpse of the required position and he'd never again have known so much as a nanosecond of peace and quiet.)

It's a good thing, then, that he retained his ability to read minds. Not that their captors could've turned that off even if they'd known about it. He'd tried every way he could think of when he was younger, short of self-guided termination, and nothing ever worked. Obviously.

He has no trouble catching his cellmate's thoughts, tuning in and out as directed by the tapping of each other's legs. (Normally, he wouldn't bother trying to avoid listening in, but privacy and solitude are in short supply at present, and only an idiot encourages their own torment in a setting from which they can't yet escape. Better to obey the terms of their temporary truce.) Responding is... _difficult,_ without assistance from his visor, but a combination of high intellect and growing familiarity with this form of conversation allows his cellmate to successfully fill in most of the blanks. It's enabled them to form a plan and put it into motion, and that's enough.

Soundwave hopes it'll work. He'd really, _really_ like to get out of here, wherever 'here' is. When he imagines life after the war, it's the result of Decepticon victory, and he's still alive to enjoy it. It's _possible_ he could be convinced to let some of the worthier Autobots live--maybe they could even join mainstream society, should they somehow prove themselves trustworthy and willing to take part in an appropriate manner. This one would certainly be suitable company if they ever let go of their stubborn devotion to the enemy faction; they're brilliant, intense, sharp-tongued and sharp-witted, with great willpower and no tolerance for idiocy. It's a combination rarely found among Soundwave's peers.

But remaining trapped in this hole together until they starve and deactivate? No. Absolutely n--

He freezes, startled by the hand patting the back of his thigh, that last train of thought derailing with a spectacular explosion.

 _You went quiet again,_ Prowl thinks in between checks of his comm unit. The alien block is holding. He tries to smother his growing concern, hoping to appear calmer than he is, but that stopped working hours ago. It's just too much for an inexperienced mech to hide.

Soundwave casually buries his own worries and pauses drilling to try to look back over his shoulder. Did he? Yes, he supposes he did. He does have a tendency to get lost in thought. Not usually something he'd consider a problem, as comfortable with silence as he is, but he can see why Prowl would. Most of the Autobots are prone to unnecessary chatter, and no mech with two bytes to rub together would feel comfortable for long with him standing behind them.

For what it's worth, it's not easy to cope with the thought of Prowl standing behind him either.

He bobs his head and lets Prowl catch a fleeting taste of the distant gray heaviness of mild regret, its edges crisping and curling as it passes through. His focus is intense, and while he cannot offer the full measure of it as he works, he _is_ listening.

He feels Prowl's doors slide up and down the edges of his arms--a sign of acknowledgment, most likely. They only just finish returning to their original position before Prowl continues. _I remember when you still talked. Out loud. It's hard to forget a voice like that._

Thick smog clouds drift into their mental space, slowly condensing into hard walls.

_Off limits. Got it._

Soundwave's biolights glow a touch brighter before settling back to their normal level. He can sense something running just below the surface of Prowl's thoughts--an attempt to puzzle it out on his own, no doubt--but Prowl has the good grace to try and keep the curious calculations to himself, so he won't dig deeper or complain. It's the most consideration anyone's shown for his feelings on that topic in several millennia.

For a while, the only sound is the distant whine of claws spinning away in the stone surrounding their cell. They get something of a reprieve when he retracts his data cables, resetting for the next round of drilling in accordance with the instructions Prowl gave him a few hours earlier, but the gentle hiss of soft mesh sliding along gritty rock can't last forever. The tips of Soundwave's cables tick-tick-tick against the wall, feeling for the marks Prowl had scratched into it with a piece broken off his chevron. He soon finds the ones he wants, and the process begins again.

Prowl vents, the sound barely audible over the shrill noise echoing around them. Soundwave pauses drilling, abruptly struck by something odd: the fraying threads now fluttering on the edges of his otherwise occupied consciousness aren't part of the tapestry of his own mind.

They're Prowl's. Prowl didn't give him a 'stop' tap.

Prowl _always_ gives him a 'stop' tap. Any time the conversation dies, or the subject of their discussion becomes too uncomfortable, or Prowl grows sick of being forced to try to protect his thoughts from a Decepticon and paranoid about how much Soundwave can really hear: tap. Prowl doesn't even like to let Soundwave keep listening while he gathers his thoughts between long comments, tapping out and right back in again. So why skip it this time?

_You stopped. Are the cables malfunctioning?_

Soundwave glances down at his leg, noting that Prowl's hand hasn't moved--not since before the aborted attempt to pry into the reason for his silence. Not even to preface that last question.

Prowl knows exactly what he did.

Prowl left himself open _on purpose._

_I said, are the cables malfunctioning?_

Soundwave shakes his head--not that Prowl can see it--and resumes drilling. It puts an end to Prowl's question, but strangely, not to Soundwave's right to continue listening. Not one to overlook the value of such permissions, he gently tugs the threads closer, trying to tease them apart and make some sense of their individual strands. It isn't hard to do; the source doesn't bother to put up a resistance. It would seem Prowl has given up on trying to hide the feeling.

A reasonable choice to make, he thinks. It's a basic assumption in a situation like this, as long as the other party isn't so outrageously antisocial they couldn't care less about their companions. Like him, Prowl may not be the most popular mech, but that doesn't stop bots like them from being concerned for or missing others. It's just something they tend to leave unmentioned. Pride, fears for someone else's safety, a half-sparked belief that pretending will make it easier if a loss does occur... yes, he's quite familiar with how it works. He isn't fooled by Prowl's denial of its existence, and he never was.

Soundwave knows the value of silence, but he also knows that it doesn't necessarily have to equal loneliness. Loneliness is dangerous. It's only one step removed from despair, and despair saps the very spark out of a bot's chassis. It drains them, causing them to sag and crumble, clouding their vision. It deflates their hopes, convincing them they have no reason to keep struggling. Eventually, despair _kills._

In a situation like theirs, the death of one will guarantee the death of the other. For the sake of the Decepticon cause and the ones who matter most, he must survive this. To accomplish that, he must see to it that Prowl does as well, even if it means resorting to tactics he'd prefer to avoid.

Something lurks too close for comfort while he thinks. It can't cross over on its own--only he can make that leap--but he feels it straining nonetheless. Pulsing tendrils probe for mechs they cannot find, dragging themselves around the walls of Prowl's mind in empty, writhing circles. It's all he can do to refrain from shuddering and gagging on the sudden taste of molten glass and rust clots.

He taps Prowl's ankle with one thin fingertip, informing Prowl that he's tuning out again, and tries not to be alarmed when Prowl's doors respond by slowly drooping a finger's width lower. The silence that follows feels like a dead thing, but it does not shake him. It can't be allowed to do so. He does not care to join it.

Soundwave takes a little while to settle on what he considers the most helpful course of action, which is fine. The sound of the drilling doesn't reach tolerable levels of muffling until two minutes beyond that point anyway; Prowl wouldn't have enjoyed the attempt if he'd tried.

It's been far too long since he last used his speakers, and they react to their activation accordingly. The unexpected pop and crackle of static fills the frame behind him with tension; the low hum they become as he prepares to 'speak' for the first time since their arrival sweeps most of it away again.

The warm metal of Prowl's palm and a neon orange spray of surprise-alarm shot through with confused purple streaks strike simultaneously. The mental blurting of his name follows hot on their trail, somewhat more controlled now that Prowl's had three consecutive seconds to process, untangle, and appropriately organize his emotions.

_Soundwave?_

He stops the drills long enough to force a rush of static out, using it to create a makeshift _shh._ A fine layer of sheepishness slides over the fading colors of Prowl's initial outbursts as he accepts the scolding, blanketing them in darkness--out of sight, out of mind. Yes?

Soundwave pushes against Prowl's back in a nudge of comfort and agreement before carrying on.

The speech he's chosen means two very different things to them, and it drives them down two very different paths. Were they inside their respective bases instead of this cramped and miserable prison, they would be attempting to kill one another over their interpretation of its contents.

In this moment, however, it is exactly what they both need to hear. Only these words will remind them of what awaits them on the other side and why they need to make it back alive. For that reason, and that reason alone, he will agree to play it.

A familiar rumbling voice pours out, filling what little space exists around and between them. "Fellow Cybertronians, members of the Council, hear me."

Prowl recognizes it as soon as the sixth word lands. The vent following it is too sharp, taken as the hand on Soundwave's leg reflexively tightens, and held too long before its release.

Soundwave does not comment on this, unwilling to interrupt. Instead, he adds a couple dozen feet of slack to one cable and loops the excess over their heads, wrapping it around Prowl's middle and adding to the physical support. If it just so happens to also remind them that they aren't alone in here, well. The more useful, the better.

_...Thank you._

The cable pulls tighter.

The speech goes on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The opening clip of Optimus Prime's speech comes from Alex Irvine's novel, Exodus.
> 
> Anyway, that's one self-indulgent little fic down. Can't wait to get my hands on tomorrow's prompt too. :)


	4. Cassettes

The small glass of glittering high grade now sitting in front of him appeared between glances at the table, almost as if by magic. Which is ridiculous. He knows magic doesn't exist. At least, he used to think so, back before the rediscovery of death-defying energon, ancient relics, and great and terrible gods. These days, he's less certain of it.

At a time like this, however, it comforts him to seek grounding in more realistic thoughts, so he tells himself it's true. That, and he can hear someone moving around behind him.

Soundwave picks it up between thumb and forefinger, twisting it this way and that, watching the pale iridescent flakes swirl with each movement. A nice thought, as these things go, and almost sufficiently tempting to push him down a path he shouldn't take... but not quite.

He lifts it over his shoulder, wordlessly asking for the mech who put it there to take it back.

"...Right." He catches the sound of fingertip rubber sliding over facial mesh as Prowl obliges--rubbing his temples, if Soundwave had to guess. Soundwave doesn't get confirmation; Prowl stops just before circling the other end of the couch and settling down with an irritated vent. (Not directed at him, of course. He knows what that version feels like. It's a sharp jab in the lateral plates, not prickling turned inward. Very different.) "Visor. Wasn't thinking."

He waves a hand, dismissing the comment. There's no need to feel guilty. It was intended to be a helpful gesture, and Prowl rarely forgets. No point holding it against him. Even if there was, the company would be sufficient compensation for the error.

He makes that last bit clear by sliding closer before sinking down into an uncharacteristic slump.

There are few who can claim the privilege of seeing him like this--unguarded, needy, openly emotive, the cold black mask discarded in spirit if not in actuality. Today, another of them strikes out on their own, hoping to make something more of themselves now that Cybertron is entering the next phase of its rebirth.

He knew it would happen one day, if they lived. He knew it from the minute they first came into his life. A Pit, a mine, a scouting mission--it never mattered where they came from. What mattered most to him was where they would eventually go, and what he could do to help them get there. Seeing them flourish was all he'd ever wanted.

This doesn't hurt any less for all that.

Soundwave tries to distract himself by turning his head to look up at Prowl, the outline of a door appearing on his visor.

"Ravage commed. He said I--" Prowl stops mid-sentence to scowl. "Never mind. It's not important. The point is, he let me in."

The distraction attempt is a successful one. Soundwave continues to stare, straightening up to get a better look at Prowl's face, patiently waiting for the rest. Prowl tries to hide from him by downing the contents of the glass and setting it down on the table, but he can't evade a telepath. Soundwave hears a mixture of irritation and affection welling up at the edges and dripping down the sides of Prowl's mind, pooling somewhere around his spark.

Soundwave leans forward, intent on hearing the whole story. There's something good here; he can smell it. A vat of poisoned low-grade leftover from the Rust Age would give off weaker fumes than Prowl's avoidance.

What he gets--at least at first--is the light behind Prowl's visor rippling from one side to the other in his version of rolled optics. Never in Prowl's existence has he known Soundwave to willingly abandon a potentially interesting tidbit; he doesn't know why he expected the mech to start now.

"Fine. He informed me that Frenzy would be leaving earlier than expected. I asked if I could be of help." Prowl lets that sit for a second before carrying on. "He said I probably couldn't make it any worse."

Soundwave turns away again with a quiet huff, mood briefly lightened by the admission. He shouldn't find his deployer's rudeness entertaining, but Ravage's insistence on keeping up appearances amuses him, given that Ravage is second in line when it comes to sheer amount of time spent with Prowl. And he has to admit that Prowl _does_ maintain a higher than normal average of botched socialization attempts. Even so, Ravage wouldn't have commed if he didn't actually believe Prowl's presence would be helpful.

Soundwave's not sure who Ravage thinks he's fooling, but it's not him.

He gently touches two fingertips to the back of Prowl's nearest hand in an apology.

"Don't worry about it." Prowl brushes a thumb over one of Soundwave's knuckles before pulling his hand away, resting that arm on the back of the couch. He waits for Soundwave to come still closer before nodding in the direction of the hallway leading to the twins' rooms. "Why so soon?"

Soundwave's never been good at maintaining the integrity of impatience when transferring that feeling to someone intended to experience it thirdhand. He's too accustomed to biding his time when it comes to something he wants, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. As a result, he struggles to maintain its razor-sharp edge.

Prowl's learned enough about the deployer in question to be able to identify the sensation even in its blunted form. The feeling he receives may be a pale red instead of something more intense, and it moves across the borders of their minds much too slowly, but it's still familiar enough to remind him of countless old arguments with Optimus. If the Autobots had just _acted_ instead of letting their leader repeatedly waste valuable termination opportunities to try and reach a portion of Megatron's spark that hadn't existed since the day the Council chambers were destroyed--

He shakes his head. He'll definitely be revisiting those feelings at some point, but this isn't the time to dwell on old grievances. Not when Soundwave is assembling dark clouds and loading them up with sizzling acidic rain. It's his responsibility to... _try_ to be supportive.

Because he's _so_ good with comforting words. Prowl, famous Autobot therapist, known far and wide for his ability to talk to people about deeply personal subjects without hacking them off. That's him. Accept no substitutes.

Maybe he shouldn't have come after all. What is he supposed to say at a time like this? Most of his limited knowledge comes from time spent around Blaster, and Blaster's deployers don't seem inclined to head off any time soon. How is he supposed to spin something Soundwave finds depressing into something cheerful?

"You--"

He doesn't even get to complete the attempt. Frenzy screeches, startling them both. Several heavy objects promptly hit the floor in a cluster of loud thumps. Soundwave is half out of his seat before Prowl has a chance to realize he's moved, company all but forgotten in his hurry to demand a status report.

"Rumble, you _spring-necked windshield smear!_ I'm gonna tear your slagging head off and stick my foot _so far down your intake_ I can kick your glitchy aft from the inside!"

"Well, it didn't damage his mouth," Prowl mutters, more to himself than to Soundwave. He reaches up and grabs Soundwave's elbow, tugging the mech back down a bit at a time. "He's fine. Sit."

Just to be sure, Soundwave waits for the all-clear from Frenzy before he lets himself relax. Once he's satisfied, he glances at Prowl, a rewind button symbol plastered on his screen.

"You did well."

Soundwave huffs his disagreement and looks back down the hall, focusing on the noises Frenzy makes while he packs up his quarters. It's probably even more of a mess in there than it was when Frenzy started, and that's saying something.

He knows he can't help with this unless he's asked--it's the all-important first step in a new direction, and it's Frenzy's right to decide how to handle it--but his hands don't seem to have gotten the message. They--no, _he;_ it's him, not just his hands. They don't do things without input from the rest of him. _He_ wants nothing but to hug his dear deployer to him and let the data cables handle the packing work. The time he has left before Frenzy finishes and officially announces the dissolution of their work agreement is short, and it's only getting smaller while he sits there. Every second lost is another pulse of his spark, each one bringing a fresh regret or fear along with it.

_"Hey."_

At first, Soundwave doesn't respond, weighing the demand for his attention against his desire to keep listening to the muffled sounds coming from behind Frenzy's door. Prowl isn't one for empty-headed babbling, though. Soundwave likes that about him. That, and how swiftly he picked up on how to communicate with Soundwave, out loud or otherwise. And that Prowl isn't afraid of disagreeing with him; that one's definitely important. And countless other things. These are just the ones that drive him to give in and twist his head an inch or so in Prowl's direction to let Prowl know he's listening.

"You did. Do well." Prowl jerks his head in the direction of Frenzy's room. "They made my life a living hell during the war. If it wasn't them, it was Jazz complaining _about_ them."

Soundwave sits up a bit, trying to hide his boosted pride. To his credit, he does an admirable job keeping his plates from puffing out--it'd be more noticeable on him than most, given how little armor he has to start with--but he misses the flicker in his biolights.

He can't help it. Working with the mech as part of a group guiding and protecting the resurrection of the arts has put to rest (most of) the mutal hatred at the core of their wartime rivalry, allowing what respect they'd held for one another to flourish in its place, but old habits die hard. They still have their little contests--nothing that would put a damper on Cybertron's progress, of course, and without the risk of death--and they still take the occasional verbal jab, or else dig at each other now and then over memories of who managed to get something done and when. Being reminded that there was a _reason_ such a rivalry developed... it's helpful.

"And they're alive. We lost _billions_ of mechs," Prowl continues, trying to ignore the two-pronged stab of guilt he feels while acknowledging his failure and watching Soundwave deflate for similar reasons. It's a partial success at best. "But they made it."

Yes, they did.

There was a time when Soundwave couldn't be sure of that. Near the end of the war, both factions found themselves scattered across the universe. Some left hoping nobody would come after them, tired of the fighting and ready to risk punishment as deserters. Others were desperate to prolong their side's survival by trying to make it as difficult as possible for enemy mechs to find them. Most of them had simply gotten separated as the factions and their strongholds crumbled, forced to wander in the hopes they'd find someone like them out there in the vast emptiness of space.

He'd fallen into the second group. In a time when taking down half a dozen Decepticons at once was a major blow instead of the bare minimum, trying to keep all his deployers at his side was a death wish. Hook made that crystal clear to him by preparing their certificates in advance and asking whether Soundwave wanted everyone smelted together or as individuals. Three days later, Soundwave swallowed his pride and prepared to send them away for their safety, terrified that he would never see them again--and worse, that he would never know _why._ Even his audio receptors had limitations.

Laserbeak had stubbornly refused to go. None of the others would get aboard their ships and shuttles unless he agreed to let one of them stay behind to keep watch over him.

"He's gonna make sure you're still here when we get back, Boss," Rumble declared, bright red optics narrowing as he pointed a tiny, angry finger at the black glass serving as Soundwave's face. " _So you better not die,_ cause I don't wanna get stuck working with Shockwave. He's a nerd."

It was one of the most sparkfelt things Rumble had ever said, even if he'd had to hide his worry and affection behind insulting someone else to do it.

And it'd worked. His plan, their plan--they'd both worked. It'd been thousands upon thousands of years before he'd seen them all again, but one by one they made their way back to him after word of the war's end began to spread. Like Prowl said, they'd lived, and they'd all made a new home for themselves on Cybertron together, just as they'd always told each other they would.

Soundwave shrinks into himself as he recalls this, ashamed. He's dishonoring his deployers by acting like this. It's been decades since the final straggler broke into their home and made his presence known by curling up on Soundwave's chest to join him for a nap, acting as though he'd never left. They all managed to come through that long separation intact, and he's had dozens of years since then to protect and teach them while they adjust to the newly rebooted Cybertron. Why does he worry _now,_ after _all of that?_ Why does he mourn their loss when they aren't dead? It doesn't mean he's going to be abandoned, or that his deployers hate him; it didn't before.

He should be celebrating the next chapter of Frenzy's life, not dreading it. That's his _real_ failure here.

Prowl watches Soundwave's plating pull inward, making the mech look even thinner than before. Before Soundwave can disappear completely, Prowl stretches a hand behind him, intending to provide reassurance of some kind. When it gets there, though, it just sort of floats in the air, unsure of what to do next. Pat? Rest flat on something? For how long? Where?

It hovers over the few spines not presently retracted, starts to drift down, and then, at the last second, shoots up again to deliver a halting trio of gentle (if uneven) pats to Soundwave's nearer shoulder. There. That's--that's probably good.

Maybe. Soundwave doesn't react right away. For a hot second, Prowl's almost convinced Soundwave's died of a broken spark right in front of him; even the mech's biolights are growing dimmer.

...Frenzy's going to kill him.

Then one of Soundwave's cables stretches out to grab his wrist, gripping it tight with both tendrils and claws and pulling it around to Soundwave's far side. It plants Prowl's hand on Soundwave's lateral plating and lets go.

Prowl obediently uses his new grip to move them each closer to one another and puts his feet up on the table. Soundwave's going to be all right. If not now, soon; Prowl can feel Soundwave relaxing against him, likely taking refuge in the relative clarity of Prowl's thoughts while working to process his own.

They sit in silence like this for close to an hour, partly helped along by the fact that Prowl is so tired after the morning's meetings and the evening's socializing that he drops into recharge at the seventeen minute mark. Soundwave presses his crest to the side of Prowl's head and listens in, soothed by the patterns of Prowl's defrag dreams. It's much, much easier to sweep the chaos running wild in his own mind aside and assemble a functional framework on which to hang his thoughts when he's soaked to the struts in beautiful precision.

Progress is and will be slow. Millions of years of trauma and worry don't undo themselves in an instant, after all. Even so, he manages to think of something simple he can do to make the next week easier by the time Ravage hops up over the far side of the couch to see how things are going.

Ravage sniffs Soundwave's side, and the hand resting on it, with the same caution he would apply to a suspected land mine. Soundwave reluctantly pulls away from Prowl's mind to peer down at his deployer, wondering what, exactly, Ravage thinks he's checking.

To Soundwave's great disappointment and mild annoyance, Ravage explains nothing. He just makes a beeline for their laps, crawling onto their legs and folding himself into a comfortable position despite Soundwave's muted clicks of protest.

They're half-sparked at best, performed mostly to preserve Soundwave's sense of dignity; he and Ravage both know the big cat's presence is more than welcome as a second emotional anchor. Besides, the little huddle he and Prowl have going on means increased warmth, and it gives Ravage a chance to gloat. Which he clearly is, paws crossed, head held high, optics slit in satisfaction.

Soundwave stretches one cable out just far enough to scratch under Ravage's chin, acknowledging Ravage's victory. His instincts were correct, as usual. Most helpful.

Soundwave _should_ be celebrating this departure, it's true. Celebrations tend to involve parties of some kind, and Frenzy never misses one of those if he can help it. It would do them all some good to host one after Frenzy gets settled into his new place. More importantly, it might help Frenzy get to know his new neighbors. Companionship will be as vital to Frenzy's wellbeing in this new place as it is for everyone staying behind. Nobody likes to be alone.

He retracts the cable, preparing to initiate his own recharge cycle. Frenzy can wake him when everything's ready to go.

Yes. A party...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They did indeed throw a party.
> 
> Soundwave innocently asked Jazz to play DJ for the night. Frenzy took the opportunity to make Jazz regret his life choices. It was the perfect housewarming gift.
> 
> Knowing he would just spend the night griping about noise violations, gambling, and other illegal activities, Prowl chose not to attend. Frenzy sent him a crate of high grade and a mostly illegible thank-you note.
> 
> Nobody knows the name of the genius who invited Swoop, but the entire neighborhood is grateful to them. A party just isn't a party until people start air surfing on a flaming dinosaur.


	5. Reconnection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some days, you just can't get rid of ~~a bomb~~ your deployers.

"Boss!"

Soundwave lifts his head and looks toward the door of his study, the glyphs rapidly filling his screen now screeching to a halt and blinking out. What in Primus' name would drive one of his deployers to physically interrupt him instead of just comming?

_"Boss!"_

The voice is closer this time. Judging by the speed and pattern of the angry stomping, the owner will work out where he is and arrive in roughly 20 seconds.

Soundwave vents and hurriedly motions for Prowl to help stack up some of the datapads sitting on the desk, hoping to both make the place more presentable and keep valuable documents in one piece. It sounds like Rumble, and Rumble has a bad habit of getting worked up enough to start slamming his hands on the nearest flat surface while he complains. Soundwave would rather not have to waste the rest of his day recovering files from dead datapads.

They finish just in time. The door slams open, startling them both, and reveals a small blue mech who looks fit to burst.

"I'm gonna kill him!" Rumble declares, punching his open palm. "I mean it this time, Boss! I know I said that last time, but this time I _really_ will."

Soundwave glances toward Prowl, as if doing so will let him borrow some of the other mech's patience. On a normal day, his own reserves could fill the Sonic Canyons and then some, but something about the prospect of being forced to settle a petty argument when he and Prowl still have piles of data to get through has caused them to pull a vanishing act.

Prowl just shrugs. They don't really have a choice. It's either this or the problem escalates into a knock-down, drag-out fight. Or did Soundwave forget what happened to Laserbeak's favorite perch two weeks ago?

Soundwave resigns himself to an extended disruption and lifts his left hand, making a small circle in Rumble's direction. _Go on._

Rumble's only too happy to do so. He starts to pace back and forth, already getting a good start on the wild gesticulating. "So there I am, minding my own business and scrubbing yesterday's cubes like the schedule said, when I hear--oh, hey, Prowl." Rumble tosses a quick wave at him.

Prowl nods a greeting. "Mm."

"Anyway. I'm scrubbing cubes when I hear this clanking in my room." He pauses to punctuate this by rapping his knuckles against a display cabinet, rattling the collection of alien broadcasting devices housed inside.

Rumble's stronger than he looks, and twice as careless. It leaves several scratches and two round dents in the gleaming metal. Somehow--even he doesn't know how--Soundwave manages to refrain from leaping up to put himself between Rumble's fist and the freshly damaged piece of furniture.

He silently mourns the loss of the hour it's going to take him to fix that.

"Which is weird, cause, you know. Ain't in it," Rumble says, resuming his brisk round trips across the floor. "So I stop scrubbing and get over there, right? And Frenzy's inside, _punching holes in my fragging lobbing ball!"_

He throws his hands wide, nearly hitting the datapad stack sitting on one corner of the desk. Soundwave's arm twitches, but he doesn't move to catch them. It seems wisest not to make any sudden movements at this point in time.

"He said holes make it more air, uh, arrow---what's the fragging word. _It flies better."_

"Aerodynamic?" Prowl offers, leaning more heavily into one side of his chair.

"That's it. I told him he's full of scrap. You know what he did?" Rumble asks. He doesn't wait for an answer. "He looked me _right in the optic_ and made another one! I'm supposed to play against Wheeljack today! He's gonna say I'm cheating!"

Soundwave puts a diagram of the secretly modified core of Rumble's lobbing ball on his visor. Rumble _is_ cheating.

"But now he's gonna _see_ it."

"I am sitting right here," Prowl reminds them both, frowning.

"Pfft. Like you watch sports. Boss, _please--"_

Soundwave makes an angry buzzing sound.

 _"C'mon._ I'll only kill him a little bit."

Again.

"Shockwave can clone him--"

Prowl makes them both jump by whooping his siren. Soundwave, who is _right next to him_ and has the most sensitive hearing in the room--no, on _Cybertron_ \--shoots him a dark glare. Was that _really_ necessary?

Prowl shrugs again, careful not to look Soundwave in the visor. It worked, didn't it?

Soundwave's getting too old for this. The war put twice his years on him. If he had to make a guess based on this interruption, Rumble alone has probably tacked on another third. It's a wonder his paint hasn't already started dulling.

He pulls in a long, deep vent, letting fresh air flow through his stressed systems to aid the coolant currently failing at its job. It doesn't do much, but it does enough. The tiny drop in temperature resets his focus, allowing him to scrape up a short term solution.

One quickly written ~~threat~~ message fired in Bulkhead's direction later, he's secured Rumble temporary access to a brand new lobbing ball (and in the process, thoroughly convinced Bulkhead of the need to pick a new favorite bar). He sends Rumble an address and, extending his left arm, points to the door.

"But what about Frenzy? He--"

He oh-so-slowly leans forward, once again stabbing his index finger in the door's direction. Rumble finds himself seized by the distinct impression that he would be in less danger if he actively dove into a sharkticon-infested lake with a gaping gut wound. Saluting, he wisely hustles himself out.

Soundwave holds the pose for another minute or so, just in case Rumble decides to come back and try his luck at continuing the protest. When that doesn't happen, he lets out a long-suffering vent and leans back again, thankful for the chair's support.

"I thought he would _never_ leave," Prowl grumbles, lifting his arms onto the desk. The hollow clinking of the mock stasis cuffs currently binding Prowl's wrists together easily catches Soundwave's attention, reminding him--as if he'd ever actually forgotten!--that they'd been in the middle of something when all of this started.

Soundwave turns his chair to face Prowl and bows his head apologetically, setting the tiny vox disruptor clutched in his right hand back on the desk. Hasty disconnections are never a pleasant experience.

He dances his fingertips along the arm of Prowl's chair, speakers setting up a low hum, eventually reaching a small ridge of folded-up plates just above Prowl's hips. He gently nudges it, tilting his head to one side in a silent question, and Prowl leans away, revealing an open panel. The hum fades out as Soundwave traces a small spiral around the panel's borders and in toward the waiting ports, replaced by a soft white blur slithering ever closer to the edges of Prowl's mind. The scent of ozone and heated energon tugs at Prowl's core, twisting his lines around an unseen claw, and Prowl is perfectly content to help it along.

"Mm. Please." He raises his hands above his head, making room for Soundwave to perch on his lap. "You're lucky I'm self-retracting," he notes, lifting his chin in anticipation of the reattachment of his disruptor. "They need to start knocking."

No argument there. Soundwave doesn't enjoy the thought of the teasing he'll endure when his deployers figure out the reason for the reminder he means to give them later, but it's a less horrifying thought than getting surprised by Ravage mid-overload. He sends the study's door lock a remote command, just in case.

The unspooling of Prowl's cables is a little hastier and clumsier this time, so determined are they to get back to where they'd been, but neither one finds himself inclined to complain; they can always slow down later. Much later. After the first two, maybe. Soundwave's never satisfied with any fewer than that anyway.

Soundwave reluctantly looks away from the points of light blinking to life on Prowl's panel and reaches for the disruptor again, waiting for their systems to recognize the availability of a connection and clear a handful of permissions checks. Prowl shivers as the prompt pops up; Soundwave swiftly borrows the sensation, electrified beads racing through his tanks and into his intake only to roll back down his spinal strut.

_Previous download interrupted. Resume? Y/N_

"Boss!"

Frenzy.

The beads stutter and scatter with a sad fizzle. Prowl's head falls back; he thunks it against his chair a few times and vents. Soundwave presses his crest to Prowl's shoulder, as if he can somehow channel every ounce of frustration in his frame out through that point of connection, one of Ravage's uglier growls standing ready to slip out of his speakers. In a truly impressive display of self-control, he dismisses the suggested file and, pushing himself back to his feet, pulls the key to the cuffs out of his subspace pocket.

_N._

Soundwave unlocks them with one hand and tugs Prowl's cables back out of his ports with the other. For some physically impossible reason, the soft _rrzzzzz_ noise their retraction makes sounds a hundred times louder than it ever has before. So does the dissolution of the telepathic connection.

Prowl cracks his knuckles and shakes his wrists out before shifting his panel cover back into place. "I'll come back tonight," he mutters, standing up and brushing himself off.

Soundwave nods, sweeping the key, cuffs, and vox disruptor into a hidden desk drawer. It should be safer then. The deployers will probably be out of the building by that time, off watching Rumble's game. He can spend the interval cleaning up the datapads containing their joint research on Soundwave's proposed upgrades to the space bridges, inspecting his collection for damage, fixing the cabinet, and taking Frenzy to pick out a new lobbing ball for Rumble--Frenzy's treat, naturally.

What Prowl will do, however, is a little less obvious; he'd made sure to keep his schedule for the day clear for... reasons. Soundwave can't think of anything Prowl might consider pressing, outside of a small backlog at work.

Curious, he brings up a picture of Cybertron and pings for attention. Where does Prowl plan on going in the meantime?

Prowl offers him a wry smile. "There's something I need to tell Wheeljack."


	6. Redemption

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize this is a Prowl-centered submission, but it involves and leads to Soundwave, and I posted a Soundwave-centered submission for Prowl week. Let's call it even. 
> 
> It was supposed to be maybe 2000 words max. I have no idea what happened. This is also super unpolished and ridiculous as hell, so like... I apologize ahead of time, but without actually being sorry.

"You can't keep going like this," Hound told him during one of their rare long-distance calls. (Like Prowl, Hound felt as though he didn't fit in. Nothing on Cybertron made his spark sing with its former intensity. _Unlike_ Prowl, he'd successfully worked out what did: Earth, and all of its strange, organic splendor. He'd been living on that planet for the last fifteen years, roaming the wild—he'd even changed his alt mode to some sort of enormous canine—and although it pleased Prowl to know that Hound was finally happy, he missed when it was easier to talk to the mech.) "You don't work out what it is you _really_ want, and fast, you'll start rusting from the spark out."

Prowl frowned. "I _know_ what I want. I _like_ my job."

Hound laughed. "That's half your problem. You've been The Job—" Prowl could hear the capitalization in Hound's voice, a gentle mocking and acknowledgment of its importance all at once—"as long as I've known you. Makes it kind of hard to be _Prowl._ "

He didn't say anything. Hound was probably right. Hound had a way of sniffing out the truth.

"Besides," Hound continued, sounding far more sly than Prowl thought he had any right to, "I didn't say scrap about your work." He paused, looking at a chronometer offscreen. "Hey, sorry to cut this short, but I should probably get going. I still have to call Mirage, and this thing keeps glitching. Can't seem to keep the rats away from the wires..."

Prowl made a disgusted face.

Hound laughed again. "Say hi to Jazz for me. Tell him he still owes me a copy of his new album."

"I will."

Hound waved and disconnected.

🚔🎵

Hound's comments bounced around in Prowl's head as he drove.

Prowl didn't often drive for the sake of driving; it felt like a waste of fuel—yes, even now, despite a renewed supply of natural energon and a massive store of synth-en as backup—and he could get more thinking done when he didn't also have to process things like where other vehicles were in relation to him and whether or not he needed to switch lanes or make a turn. The couple living next to him, however, had started an unusually noisy argument, and when _that_ was done, they'd turned to unusually noisy... well. He'd had good incentive to get out of his apartment for a little while. At least the most irritating thing he'd hear out here was the horn of an impatient speedster.

But back to Hound's words. Hound was right. Prowl had to figure out what it was he wanted—and he had a deep suspicion that what he wanted now, more than anything else on Cybertron, was to figure out how not to be so damn _alone._

The thing about making oneself unpopular during wartime, Prowl had discovered over time, was that the unpopularity tended to carry over into truces and the peace that followed them.

He hadn't thought it too terrible at first. With all the fighting and arguing that went on as everyone decided how to split up the planet, who should be excused for what they did, and how they wanted to rebuild, the ability to secure himself some guaranteed peace and quiet had seemed like a blessing. At most, someone—usually a Decepticon, but not always—got it into their head to try picking a fight with him over how long they'd spent in a brig or established prison somewhere. A few of those encounters went a little worse than he would've liked, but nobody had successfully taken their pound of steel out of him, so he couldn't complain too much. And it was to be expected, as much as he would've preferred they just get the Constructicons to build them a bridge for the purposes of its being driven over.

After all, did _he_ go around brawling with everyone who had ever put him through a rough interrogation? No. No, he did not. And it wasn't as if the thought hadn't tempted him from time to time. He'd been forced to hold himself together through some particularly heinous torture sessions over the vorns. If not for the example Prowl wanted to help set in this new society, Beetle would probably have needed to spend his first night back on Cybertron crawling home to the rest of his crew using _just his tongue_ —it'd been nearly two and a half million years, several surgeries, and more rounds of physical therapy than Prowl cared to remember since the last time Beetle had him in an interrogation cell, and Prowl's left forearm _still_ glitched out and went numb any time his surroundings dropped below a specific temperature.

The point was, he'd been working hard to shake off some of his cynicism and bitterness and try to get on with constructing a better, happier life. Others could at least spare a half-afted attempt to do the same.

Much to Prowl's growing dismay, however, his isolation had carried on unabated even after mechs on both sides finally started slogging through the decades-centuries-millennia-long healing process. Friends once disconnected by unavoidable circumstances reached out and began talking again. Mechs who had jockeyed against each other for valuable positions eventually laughed and strolled together as equals, recounting some of their stupidest attempts to one-up each other. Those who had tried like Pit to slaughter each other started sharing knowledge forbidden to one of the parties before the war—Slog began teaching Bulkhead to paint, while Swerve found an eager geology student in Scavenger.

But with almost no exceptions—Prowl could count them on one hand—actually, Prowl could count them on two fingers, and he wasn't completely sure about the second—Prowl's social circle remained limited to the tiny number of mechs who'd already learned to appreciate (or if not that, at least tolerate) his presence during the war. And most of those scant few had picked up plenty of new friends with whom they were happy to split their available time even further.

Safety, strategy, and fear had turned into boredom, loneliness, and regret.

Prowl hated it. He'd dived headfirst into his new job to avoid thinking about it.

That part wasn't so bad. He'd told Hound the truth: he really _did_ like his job. He could still help the police if he so chose, and sometimes needed their help acquiring useful permissions or data, but he'd found it far more enjoyable to take on investigations requested by civilians in need of assistance. And the freedom to go digging after corruption at _any_ level... oh, yes. After everything he'd seen up til then, he liked that part very much. It was the least he could do to try to make up for all the things he hadn't done before (and, although he tried not to dwell on them too long, some of the things he _had_ ).

The long hours were nice, too. All that time spent poring over seemingly unrelated threads, looking for the ones that would, when tugged, unravel to reveal the big picture—or, and he _loved_ when this happened, an even larger puzzle in need of solving. Unfortunately, those long and odd hours made it difficult to accomplish any of the socializing he so desperately wanted, and most mechs needed a lot more attention than either Prowl or his schedule could offer. Again, not that they were lined up around the block to get it.

Sure, they came to him when they had a problem that needed solving, and he was only too happy to help them with it—he felt like he'd been _made_ to help them, to protect them from what pain and suffering he could—but nobody stayed afterward. They sent a thank-you note, or a small gift basket, or paid him a little extra, and that was the extent of it. Polite little things letting him know that his services, and presence, were no longer to be a part of their lives (providing they didn't run into more trouble, of course). Nothing more.

He wondered why that was. Did they feel that The Job, as Hound had put it, made it too awkward or inappropriate to socialize afterward? Did they believe him unable or unwilling to talk to them even after getting himself neck-deep in their personal matters? Maybe they were uncomfortable with its similarity to his old line of work... but then, Chase actually _did_ Prowl's old line of work, and _he_ got along with a pretty sizable group of mechs.

Pit. If there were so many people still holding grudges against him, maybe they just couldn't see past who he'd been during the war. Prowl supposed he couldn't blame them. He wasn't the only one who'd done nasty, behind-the-scenes work, but he'd intentionally let himself become the biggest target. It let the others do their job in peace.

At least Jazz understood. No way he couldn't have—he'd been one of the 'others' in question.

Prowl was grateful for the friendship they had, and that, no matter how bad things had gotten at times, it never once wavered. But Jazz, like many, was far more popular than Prowl. His attention was in high demand, and while he was always happy to keep a bit of it set aside for whenever Prowl wanted it, it simply wasn't enough to cover what Prowl was missing. Nor would Prowl demand it be made to manage. He didn't have the right to hoard Jazz all to himself, and he wouldn't disrespect Jazz by trying.

That said, he _did_ have a message to deliver. And unless something big had happened, this _was_ Praxus Fold 'Em night at Jazz's place. And Jazz _had_ been trying to get him to learn how to play cyberpoker for the better part of the last year. " _Prowl._ The two slickest Autobots in the whole damn army?" he'd say. Every time he'd ever pitched it, he'd said it like that. Prowl could hear the exact sound of every word, just as if Jazz were standing there in front of him and reciting them. "They wouldn't know what hit 'em."

...Fine. One night hanging out with Jazz was hardly the same thing as being demanding. And it'd kill two birds with one stone. Maybe a third, if he could snag a little time afterward to ask Jazz's opinion on how to change things. Hound was smart, but Jazz was smart _and_ clever.

Prowl switched lanes, took the next turn, ignored the mech who transformed an arm just to make a rude gesture as they passed by—Torque, spent eight days in the brig for getting carried away during a brawl over something stupid and knocking Warpath clean out the morning of a charge Warpath had been intended to lead—and headed off to Jazz's apartment.

🚔🎵

"Holy scrap," Smokescreen blurted, just before slapping a hand to his mouth.

"I think you meant 'Hey, Prowl,'" Jazz said, glancing toward Smokescreen while shuffling the cards. He could wield a wide variety of useful glances despite having a visor instead of individual optics, and this one, Prowl had learned through many years of experience, clearly stated that the only acceptable response to Jazz's statement was complete agreement.

Smokescreen had _also_ learned that through many years of experience. "Yeah! Yes. I did. Hey, Prowl," he said, forcing his optics to look a little less wide. "Didn't, uh—expect to see you here. Tonight."

Jazz's gaze held.

"But we're glad to see you!" Smokescreen added, hastily, at roughly the same time that an unfamiliar mech on the far side nervously added, "You can stay! Sir."

Jazz nodded, the motion nearly imperceptible, and stopped shuffling. He plopped the cards on the table and gestured for Prowl to pull up a chair. Prowl noted that he'd gone back to his usual bright smile. "Good to have you, mech. I've been telling bots I'd get you to drop in for _months._ " He chuckled, elbowing Prowl's arm. "Started thinking you were _trying_ to make a liar out of me."

Jazz thought no such thing, and they both knew it, but that wasn't the reply Jazz wanted from him.

"I thought lying was the _point_ of this game," Prowl said. 

Jazz's smile shifted into a wicked grin. "Oh, you have no idea."

It was almost comfortable, putting their old masks on in front of others—they'd done it for millions of years, just trying to help each other get by despite the stress of their positions—but only almost. It'd been a long time since he'd talked to half the mechs at the table; he'd grown tired of trying and getting nothing but short and painfully awkward attempts at conversation for his troubles. The other three were strangers.

He nodded at them. "Sorry. Didn't catch your names?"

The one who'd spoken earlier went first. He looked like he was about to spontaneously combust out of pure terror. "Wildbreak. Sir. Uh, Prowl. Uh, sir."

"Just 'Prowl' is fine, thank you."

Wildbreak nodded a little too sharply and thanked him a little too loudly, the very picture of relief as he slumped in his seat. Deciding to cut the mech a break, Prowl abandoned his plan to ask more about him and moved on to the next one. "And you two?"

"B3-14A," said the Vehicon, pointing to themselves. "Bea for short, if Bumblebee's not here. And that's Igu," they added, now pointing to the small, dark purple lizard next to them; it cracked its mouth open in as close to a polite smile as it could get. "We work together."

A minicon, by the looks of things. That was surprising; usually, minicons didn't partner up with mechs who weren't naturally designed to act as a host to them. Prowl hoped the interaction would catch on—far too many mechs saw minicons as tools, drones, or irritating walkway obstacles instead of actual bots. The more old, bad beliefs they could throw out while rebuilding, the better.

"Pleasure."

"Ssssso, should we teach you to play, or...?" Smokescreen looked from Jazz to Sights to Wildbreak, hoping for some sort of cue.

"Nah," Wheeljack said, speaking up for the first time. He'd been quietly flicking a shanix in the air since Prowl arrived. "He'll pick it up as we go," he continued, catching and holding the coin as he twisted to look at Prowl with narrowed optics. " _Won't you,_ Prowl?"

Prowl knew a challenge designed to force him to agree or back down in shame when he heard one. (Was Wheeljack really still that mad about the damage to his swords? Prowl had paid for new ones. Besides, it wasn't his fault the mech had chosen to store acid in an uncovered bucket.) Fortunately, Wheeljack was right. "I will. I take it we're playing for those."

Nobody answered him. None of them wanted to be the first to admit to it.

Prowl vented, annoyed. It hadn't been against any regulations since the war ended, and frankly, he couldn't care less how they chose to waste their own money. "Fine." He didn't have any on him, though. "Jazz? I'll transfer the amount. Oh, and Hound says you owe him a CD."

"Gotcha covered," Jazz chirped, already getting up to fetch his spare stash. "I can't _wait_ to see this."

🚔🎵

Bea, it turned out, was the third best player at the table. When it came to games of bluffing, having a permanently immobile faceplate was a definite advantage.

Sights wiped out first, and then Wildbreak. Wildbreak chose to stay and watch the hands play out, gnawing on his fingertips the whole time, while Sights flew away griping about his good-for-nothing no-show partner. (Smokescreen bent low over his cards after Sights left, muttering "We've really gotta stop inviting him" as he tossed a couple of shanix onto the pile.)

Jazz took out Igu, who'd lasted an unusually long time despite sporting an even shallower wallet than Sights. Wheeljack groaned and dragged his hands down his face when Prowl finally bluffed him into financial oblivion, but he kicked his feet up on Sights' chair and pulled a flask out of one lower leg compartment instead of starting problems, so Prowl thought it safe to assume that Wheeljack wasn't going to hold a grudge over it. Just over the swords.

Smokescreen looked at his remaining competition and wisely decided to quit while he could still claim he'd won some extra shanix. (Less wisely, he let Wheeljack goad him into flicking one of them at the mech, who laughed and pocketed it.)

"Fifty," Jazz said, adding to the pot with a series of clinks.

Bea wilted. "Don't think so."

"Ah, come on," Jazz laughed. "You know the rules; valuables are just as good." He leaned closer, grinning and propping his chin up in one hand. "And I _know_ you wanna beat him. Best bragging rights you'll ever have."

Prowl raised a brow ridge. "'Valuables?'"

Wheeljack waved a lazy hand. He was, by then, well on his way to being comfortably buzzed. Prowl made a note to find out what he had in that flask of his. "We keep playing long as you got something good. House rule."

"I see." He turned to Bea. "What do you have?"

Bea hesitated, and then nodded and withdrew a thin, hand-sized slip of copper. (Hand-sized for Prowl, anyway; Decepticon hands tended to be longer than was generally proportionate thanks to their preference for maintaining deadly claws.)

"Aw, not _that_ old thing," Wheeljack groaned.

"What's wrong with it?" Prowl asked, curious. He leaned forward to try to see it, but Bea had set it down on the far side of the shanix pile.

"Nothing's wrong with it, s—Prowl," Wildbreak said. For a moment, he looked aghast at himself for having piped up, but then he decided he'd already put himself in danger and kept going. "We just—it, uh, comes up a lot."

An item everybody kept accepting but nobody wanted to keep?

Wheeljack took a swig from his flask. "Every time, you mean."

"Sorry. I _had_ a laser scalpel. I lost it to Knock Out."

"Works for me," Jazz said, gesturing for Prowl to throw his lot in. "You in, mech?"

Prowl didn't see why not. If nothing else, it might let him solve this little mystery. "I'm in."

🚔🎵

Bea's loss proved to be the end of the game; after that, Jazz stretched and declared himself satisfied for the night. Prowl, now over-socialized for the next week, felt no need to protest his decision.

The other four bid their farewells and shuffled out, not terribly interested in waiting for them to count their winnings. Prowl didn't get much more than the expected "Bye" from anyone, although Wildbreak did manage to add his name afterward, but that was just as well. He didn't want them to think he planned on making a habit of attending. The night hadn't been _unenjoyable,_ per se. It just wasn't something he itched to do a second time.

He counted faster than Bea and Jazz, looking forward to getting home soon and heading to berth. The coins were easy to put away; they _just_ fit into a forearm compartment. Couldn't even jingle. Nobody would know he had them, except for the mechs he'd played with, and if he had to guess, he'd say they weren't going to be talking. (Even if they did, who would believe them?)

The copper slip, however...

Prowl slid it over to himself, meaning to prod it and find out whether it was self-folding or hinged. It was neither, but that was about to become the least of his concerns.

There wasn't anything _to_ it. It was blank. A plain old strip of copper. Why were they all so worked up about it?

He frowned and flipped it over.

He immediately flipped it back the way it had been, covering it with his hand.

"Jazz," he said, careful to keep his voice hovering as close to calm as he could get it.

"Yeah?"

"Is this a practical joke?"

"Nope," Jazz said, stacking the last of his coins. He tapped the one on the top and clicked at them, as if instructing them to stay right where they were, and then leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head. "You won it fair and square."

"That's not what I meant. Why is there a picture of Soundwave on the other side?"

"Probably cause somebody put it there," Jazz replied.

Prowl very slowly counted to ten to stop himself from throwing the nearest heavy object at Jazz. Upon reaching ten, he paused, and then counted five more just in case. "Bea, this was your slip."

"Oh, no," Bea said, shaking their head. Despite having the fewest shanix to count, they hadn't quite finished. "It's not mine. What I mean is, it _wasn't_ mine. It was Rigger's. I won it last week."

"Rigger's."

"Yeah. The Decepticon. You know her—big ship, chains around the wrists and ankles, fights with a net. Ex-pirate?"

Prowl knew her, yes. _Everyone_ knew her. Forty years ago, she'd hurled an anchor through Starscream's window because he'd insulted her conjunx. Starscream lived on the twenty-fifth floor of a newly constructed tower in Vos. She'd been standing at ground level.

Rigger was a very popular bot.

"Why did Rigger have it?"

"She won it off Wheeljack," Jazz said, only now feeling helpful.

Prowl could not find it in himself to appreciate the assistance. "Why did _Wheeljack_ have it?"

"It's like Wildbreak said—it comes up a lot."

Prowl rubbed the middle of his chevron and vented. Probably best if he didn't keep pursuing that line of questioning. He really didn't need a headache while driving home. The lights of the other drivers would just make it worse.

Moving his hand, he carefully—gingerly, even—flipped it over again to get a better look at the printed side.

There could be no doubting it; that was an etching of Soundwave. Nobody else had a frame like his. The slip itself was a... a _ticket_ of some sort, judging by the arrangement of the glyphs covering the top half. Which was odd, because he'd never heard of Soundwave doing or taking part in anything that would require tickets this pretty and expensive to produce (ignoring that it was obvious the creator didn't have access to much in the way of a graphic artist at the time).

Now that he thought about it, Prowl couldn't even imagine what Soundwave would do at venues using digital or foil tickets. Soundwave mostly dealt in network maintenance and repair; his only public professional involvement with music was the occasional fabrication and sale of an instrument. This...

 _This_ was something special.

It'd seen quite a bit of handling. Soundwave was more or less intact—one of his shoulders was missing some color—but the engraved glyphs were small, shallow, and crammed closely together, and the enamel which once filled them had long since worn away under the thumbs of careless owners, making them rather difficult to read from a distance.

Prowl lifted it closer to his visor and tilted it in different directions, trying to to get a clearer angle.

 _ROMANCE AND RODION: REBUILDING OUR FUTURE,_ it said in what passed for obnoxiously large glyphs given the context. He felt embarrassed on the writer's behalf just reading them. Beneath that, in glyphs carrying marks of lesser emphasis, he could read two more sets of words: _Dinner And Dancing With Your Favorites_ and _Soundwave,_ in that order.

Magnifying the slip allowed him to read the fine print even further below, but he didn't see anything remarkable there—just the usual instructions and restrictions spiel, if said spiel had been written by someone with a blurry scan of the back of a lottery ticket and no head for legalese. Honestly, it was so stunningly bad it'd swung all the way back around to impressive. It didn't even have an expiration date, which struck Prowl as a terrible idea when involving the concept of dating.

He set it down again. "Why would anyone keep this?"

"Memorabilia," Jazz said, shrugging.

"I meant, why wasn't it used?"

Jazz shrugged again. "Nobody likes kissing a TV?"

"Very helpful," Prowl said, not meaning a word of it. "Thank you."

Bea had finally finished counting their winnings and was just as slowly placing the coins inside their lower right leg. "Donations were scarce when we first returned," they said, adding one coin at a time. "Everyone wanted to rebuild their own cities. Nobody wanted to help with somebody else's."

Prowl nodded. He'd returned to Cybertron in the third big wave of mechs, after ragtag settlements and vital facilities had already begun to pop up. The fights over how to proceed with more intense rebuilding had yet to reach their eventual peak—and what a peak it'd been!—but the very worst of the starved scrabbling to survive was already over.

"Bots tried a lot of things to fund their pet projects. Wheelarch started a charity date auction. Fifteen bots. Winners got tickets like that one. Arcee and Soundwave were the most popular." Their voice brightened a bit. It sounded like they would've smiled, had they been given a face capable of it. "I bid on Scorponok." It dimmed again. "Didn't win. I should have picked Grimlock. He only got two bids."

"I see." He tapped his fingers on the table, staring down at the bizarre ticket. "So this really _is_ considered valuable."

"One of a kind," Jazz said, bobbing his head. "Guaranteed. I've owned it a couple times myself—kept thinking maybe I'd get it autographed. Never got around to it. That mech's slippery as a greased morphobot."

Behind his visor, Prowl rolled his optics, even more grateful than before that Jazz quit playing when he did. Jazz _would_ try to find a way to torque Soundwave off. At least those two had started settling for light to moderate torment these days instead of outright attempts at assassination.

"I'll take that under advisement." Prowl reached back, tucking the ticket into a pocket in one of his doors. "Thanks for the game."

"Any time, mech. Any time." Jazz reached up to clap him on the back as he passed.

"Bea."

"Prowl."

And then he was gone.

Jazz chuckled.

🚔🎵

It wasn't too hard to figure out who he should start with when seeking answers to his questions about the strange ticket in his possession.

"One good reason to let you walk away with your spark," Scorponok growled, glowering over his cube and across the table. He leaned forward, his tail arching over his head in a quiet threat. "I don't _like_ cops... former or otherwise."

Prowl's gaze flicked up to the stinger at its tip, and then back down to Scorponok. There wasn't much he could do to convince the gruff old mech to help out of the goodness of his spark, and Scorponok's solution to removing someone he thought might endanger himself or the two wrecking balls masquerading as his partners would be a quick poke from his tail. At this range Prowl was neither quick enough nor agile enough to avoid it. Death would be swift.

The old standby, then. It was fine; he won far more than he'd need for this the night before. "Payment for your time," he said, patting his forearm. "25 shanix for a few quick questions. 25 more if you can tell me what I want to know."

Scorponok's optics narrowed. Prowl picked up on the soft rustle-hiss indicating that the tail had now locked into position and was primed to move. "And what is it you think you need to know?"

Prowl slowly raised both hands above the table. No threat here. Nobody in danger from his investigations. "Just a quick history lesson. I acquired..." He paused, contemplating how best to phrase it. "An unusual piece of memorabilia, and I'm not familiar with its provenance."

"Its _what?_ "

"Its origins. Where it came from, why it exists—the little details. It's impossible to properly appreciate an artifact without them."

Scorponok considered this. It sounded true enough. Everything he'd ever personally learned, been told, or overheard about Prowl built up the picture of a mech who built his existence around having all the facts. He was probably just the right combination of nerdy and uptight that would make little placards or something for all the items in a collection.

"...Maybe. What is it? Grainy holovid? Poster?" He sat back a bit, but didn't relax his tail. Pit fighting fans were an unpredictable bunch. Not that he'd ever pegged Prowl for being one of them, but you never could tell, could you? "Used to sign a lot of posters. Most of them are reprints." If Prowl paid a lot of money for one of those without checking, chances were he was out a lot of money.

"It's an engraved copper slip, hand-sized, with a picture of Soundwave—"

"Hold on." Scorponok's optics lit up. His tail dropped straight to the floor, appearing to force his claw to rise up instead. Scorponok pointed it at Prowl. "You win this thing in a game of cyberpoker?"

Prowl's visor flickered. "Oh." Just how many mechs had this ticket gone through? "You know it?"

"I'm the reason you _have_ it." Scorponok slid his drink to the side, folded his claws together, and leaned forward again, resting his arms on the table. He looked darkly pleased.

Prowl wondered if he should've called Grimlock instead. He'd opted not to after remembering how much of a motormouth Swoop could be. Now he was reconsidering that decision. With Grimlock, he risked being killed just as thoroughly, but at least someone would have a shot at finding his pieces afterward. (His head. They would find his head. Grimlock still kept the ones from his favorite kills in a trunk he thought nobody knew about. Again: Swoop was something of a motormouth.)

"Seventy-five. Then you leave me alone," Scorponok said, his growl briefly returning. Prowl got the impression the second part was not up for debate. "I don't need trouble. You'll get what you want."

Prowl turned his head to one side, half suspicious. What trouble?

Then he flicked open his forearm compartment and began counting out an assortment of coins. "All right."

🚔🎵

Scorponok was right. Prowl got what he wanted.

He locked the door to his apartment and dropped down into his frame-responsive recliner. Air rushed out of him in an exhausted vent. He replaced it with a longer, slower one, and reminded himself to be grateful he wasn't dead. Just very, very tired.

The sheer amount of information Scorponok was willing to give up had surprised him—turned out there were several oceans' worth of bad energon between Scorponok and Soundwave. Apparently, Scorponok used to have claws _and_ hands before their first Pit fight in Iacon. This was but the first of many, many... _many_ reasons they hated one another.

Unfortunately, the delay caused by Scorponok's extended complaining pushed Prowl's return trip an hour later than intended, which put him in the unenviable position of getting trapped in a traffic jam.

Normally, that wouldn't have been a problem; bots could just transform and stroll down the sidewalk instead. There was, however, no sidewalk on the main bridge over Thunderhead Pass. Pedestrians and mechs without mobile alt modes took the smaller bridge off to its right. Being only a quarter of the main bridge's width and farther away from it than most mechs could jump unassisted—an important safety feature, given the impatience of many bots—removed it from play. The only other option he'd had was to take the deadly drop in the hopes of making the long climb back up its walls. Even if he'd lived, it would've taken him more time to do that than to sit and wait.

So he'd sat, and he'd waited, and when he finally got back, he was too tired to move.

All caught up to the present again, Prowl pulled the slip out to look at it in the dim lighting.

Wheelarch was a smart mech, capitalizing on other mechs' loneliness. The date auction successfully jumpstarted his push to begin planning Rodion's rebirth and put him miles ahead of other would-be refounders, so that Rodion was now the next best place to settle after Iacon and Kaon themselves. Quite the impressive victory.

He had, however, failed to understand two very important things about running a charity date auction.

One: It was necessary to take into consideration the personal boundaries and limitations of each mech in the auction when deciding on the activities to be enjoyed, and to make all three of those known _before_ the auction began, so that the winners didn't waste their time and money bidding on an evening of dinner and dancing with a mech known to be unwilling to eat or dance in public.

Two: It was even _more_ crucial to check in with the mechs volunteering to be auctioned off for a night to make sure they had actually put their own names on the list and were _not,_ in fact, victims of a cruel prank pulled by somebody with a grudge against them.

Somebody like Scorponok, for example.

Prowl had no idea who'd placed the winning bid. Scorponok hadn't been able to remember the name of its original owner, saying only that they must have had bearings the size of a titan.

He wondered if Soundwave knew. It was hard to imagine otherwise.

Prowl idly fanned his faceplate with the ticket, thinking back to Scorponok's final comment.

"Word of advice," he'd said, knocking back the rest of his cube and pushing himself onto his feet. "Don't let him find out that you have it."

"Why?"

"Because you aren't good enough to kill him," Scorponok replied, with more scorn than Prowl thought was strictly necessary. "And he _hates_ that thing."

Naturally, Prowl decided that the best thing he could do with it was to give it to Soundwave.

🚔🎵

Easier said than done.

Soundwave, he soon discovered, was not one for moving around in broad daylight. At least, not in any way that Prowl could easily track.

He wasn't sure where or how Soundwave had acquired access to a ground bridge, but access Soundwave nevertheless had, and it consistently spoiled Prowl's attempts to figure out when he could go through with his plans for the ticket. For the first three days, Prowl couldn't tell whether Soundwave ever even left his apartment. It was the deployers themselves who eventually gave the game away—they occasionally spoke of meetings with "the Boss", and he'd noticed that some of them came back in different groups than they'd left with... when he'd seen them leave at all, instead of just coming home twice in a row.

Prowl enjoyed unraveling a good mystery, but there was a difference between following someone around for a job and following someone because he wanted to talk to them. The first was professional. The second was acting like a stalker. Better to quit before it got to that point.

He'd just wait for a good opportunity to strike by chance instead. Patience was one of his stronger suits, and who really knew that he had the ticket? Jazz wasn't going to throw Prowl under the bus, and Scorponok was probably waiting to watch him get slaughtered for bringing it up; he wouldn't spoil his own fun. Wheeljack could hold a grudge, but he wouldn't go so far as to put Prowl in real danger. Bea, Igu, and Wildbreak were relative unknowns, but they were also Decepticons who hadn't climbed too high up the ranks. Their fear of what Soundwave could do if he found out they'd been playing around with the ticket would keep them quiet.

No, the only real problem was Smokescreen.

Truly amazing, what a single day of plotting and a handful of useful facts about other mechs could still accomplish. Two carefully placed party flyers snagged from a surprised minicon; the purchase of all the agate-flecked rust sticks from Smokescreen's usual shop (once again funded by the cyberpoker game), forcing him to go to the next closest shop; and a 'casual' grumble about Smokescreen's tendency to drive too fast while walking past Hot Rod later, he no longer had to worry. Smokescreen got too caught up having fun with his brand new friend to cause trouble... for Prowl, at least.

Prowl went about his business in peace after that. After a week, the urgency of it all began to fade, moving his plan from the front of his mind to somewhere in the back, only touched on when he wondered if Soundwave would be where he was going and promptly discarded when that wasn't the case.

Then he bumped into Rumble, who was, evidently, in just as much of a rush to position himself near the little eatery at which Prowl had planned to go on a miniature stakeout.

"What are you doing here?" he whispered, surprised. He'd known Chainclaw suspected Doubledealer of cheating, but somehow, he wasn't expecting it to be with Rumble. The paint scrapes Chainclaw had sampled were a decent match, now that he thought about it, but... no. No, it just didn't seem right.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Rumble hissed back. "You don't even _like_ Helexian fuel."

Prowl blinked. "How do you know th—never mind. Stupid question."

"Kinda, yeah. Whatever. Get lost, mech," Rumble said, waving a hand at him like one of the old Senators dismissing an unworthy petitioner. "I got a job to do, and it ain't about you."

Prowl considered this information for a couple of seconds before venturing a guess. "Doubledealer?"

It was Rumble's turn to blink. "How'd you know that? Somebody put you onto him too, huh?" He popped open the roof access lock's cover with a quick flick of his wrist and plugged himself into the system, getting ready to crack it open.

What cheek, pulling a stunt like that right in front of him. Prowl didn't know whether to be amused or annoyed.

He settled for helpful. "You don't need to do that. I have the key." A smirk. " _Legally borrowed._ "

Rumble broke into a smile. "Nice. Give it here."

Prowl tossed it over and folded his arms, waiting while Rumble disconnected and swiped it through the reader. "You spend a lot of time tracking down unfaithful partners?"

" _Unfaithful partners?_ " Rumble temporarily turned his voice down to hide his laughter; Prowl could still see his little frame shaking like someone had put him in a paint mixer. He pushed the door open and stepped out onto the roof. "That ain't why I'm here. Anyway, we figured out he was clanging Bugly on the sly last week."

 _Bugly?_ Prowl frowned. There really was no accounting for taste. "Chainclaw only hired me two days ago," he said, following Rumble out.

"Probably too busy freaking out over his own backfires to notice. Nah, we got something better. Tell you what: do the listening for me? I'll give you the stuff on Bugly."

Prowl frowned harder. It seemed like cheating, just getting the answer handed to him—but then, how was this any different from finding out a target had confided everything to the best friend only too happy to blab the info to him? He could check what they knew against what he'd found and see if it lined up; if it didn't, nothing stopped him from continuing his own investigation.

"And what will _you_ do?"

Rumble pulled a small tablet out of his subspace and held it up. "Ratbat made me a program to... uh. You'll find out when he gets talking, I guess. Don't know it real well, though. Kinda hard to use that _and_ listen."

"Fair enough. No pictures?" Prowl asked, looking over the roof and across the street at the eatery's open-air tables.

Rumble grinned. "What, you forget about Buzzsaw already?"

Prowl hummed noncommitally to hide his satisfaction with the answers he'd been given. This long after the end of the war and Soundwave's team was still as effective as ever. Doing something much more helpful these days, too, by the sound of it—Doubledealer had always been shady, and Ratbat's involvement in an operation almost always signaled that, one way or another, someone's financial situation was about to get a lot worse.

He could admire all of that. Soundwave's professionalism approached legendary status, and Prowl had always thought it a shame that he'd made himself a part of the Decepticon uprising instead of joining the Autobots. The war would have been over in months if he'd landed on their side. Megatron never really understood what he had in his grip.

The minicons, too. Prowl knew Megatron hadn't liked them, but they'd made Soundwave even more successful while they were with him. They'd pulled more Decepticon plans out of the fire than mechs twice their size.

The Autobots, by contrast—and Prowl included himself as part of this failure—never quite figured out how to handle Blaster's deployers after his death on Aquatron. Given no real time to process their loss before the demands of the battlefield took hold again, the four minicons had ended up drifting apart; sticking together as a group kept the pain fresh in their minds. Steeljaw became an embittered loner, while Ramhorn disappeared altogether; not even his former companions knew where he'd gone. Only Rewind and Eject stayed in what could loosely be considered contact. Very loosely. Almost totally disconnected, honestly.

Prowl glanced at Rumble while patching into the bug the minicons had planted earlier that day.

Yes. He was very glad Soundwave still had them, and that they had him.

Pity the mech hadn't come along for the investigation. Prowl didn't want to send the ticket on by way of Rumble; it'd be asking for trouble. He'd just have to keep waiting.

🚔🎵

On occasion, Prowl got so caught up in what he was working on that he forgot pesky little maintenance needs like, oh... recharging and refueling. He was better at remembering than he'd been immediately after the war, but without the regular cycle of life in the Autobot army guiding his actions or the nudging of one of his few friends to remind him, he tended to look at his chronometer, promise himself he'd head to the dispenser as soon as he finished narrowing down where someone's mysterious two-thousand shanix payment had gone, and then wonder six hours and four mysteries later why his tanks were still low. 

It'd happened again.

For once, it wasn't work-related. Not strictly. Nobody had hired him to find out what'd happened to Ramhorn all those years ago, and nobody was paying him.

But the question had gnawed at him since his temporary work arrangement with Rumble a couple of days ago, and it was far more interesting than most of his little side projects. Digging up old reports and gathering accounts from mechs who'd been around Ramhorn in the years leading up to his disappearance probably wouldn't reveal anything new—even if it did, he wasn't sure it'd be the right thing to do to try tracking Ramhorn down—but it did ease his guilt, if only a little.

Prowl wondered what Soundwave had felt like, sending his own deployers away when he did. Did he do this kind of thing after the war was over? Trying to hunt them down again? Or had he trusted them to come back to him on their own? Soundwave was a deeply loyal mech—nobody could deny that, strange though it was to find such a shining example of the trait among the Decepticons—but he was just as bad about throwing himself into his work as Prowl, and he'd been heavily involved in ensuring the peace talks and rebuilding got off to a smooth and (relatively) nonviolent start. 

Prowl recalled how run down Soundwave had looked back then. It was possible he hadn't been able to extricate himself from all of that long enough to do anything _but_ wait.

Prowl paused the audio recording he'd been going over and sat back, considering the handful of mechs who meant the world to him and how he'd feel if they disappeared. If, for some reason, Hound suddenly stopped calling, what would he do? He knew how he'd reacted to the ones from the early days, before he'd learned to shut himself down and push those losses to the side as well as he had. He knew how he'd reacted when Bluestreak—

Prowl immediately stood up and walked away from his desk. He needed a break. And to be somewhere else. Literally anywhere but inside his apartment.

His tanks were dipping below a third anyway, and he didn't have enough left in either the dispenser or the storage cabinet to top off a petrorabbit. It wouldn't be the first late night trip to pick up a fresh supply, and it wouldn't be the last.

Prowl slammed the door on the way out.

🚔🎵

The fresh air and the new additions to the energon on offer had cleared his mind some, dangling distractions in front of his visor until he could vent without feeling rust creeping deeper beneath his armor with every inhalation. He'd even splurged a little in an effort to remind himself that life was better now, picking up a few chilled semi-gels coated in mercury, a box of assorted minigeodes, and a bottle of double-filtered fake high-grade from Mixmaster's latest line—"Zero Point Punch", the label said. Wheeljack had commented on it during the cyberpoker game, claiming it had all the same flavors as the much more popular Paradron Punch, which Prowl gathered had been the stuff in his flask, but wasn't as fun.

Wheeljack could be an aft, but he knew his drinks.

He'd been on the road back home for all of two minutes, trying to figure out when would be the best time to enjoy the specialty items, when he spotted a pair of familiar shapes whizzing by overhead. It was just this side of dead quiet—almost everyone still out at this hour was busy in environments more suited to their goals than the open air—and they didn't appear to be carrying anything or spying on anyone.

Prowl quickly charted their probable path based on the direction they'd been traveling and the speed they were going.

They were, in fact, headed on a course that would take them out of the city and... into the wild? What were they looking for out there? Some of the larger forms of wildlife occasionally made it into the city and caused trouble. Could also be they were on a trail—a new energon vein, perhaps? Someone getting up to something they shouldn't?

Prowl told himself it wasn't any of his business. If it was something worth his time, they'd tell him so. Or he'd find out on the news the next morning. He had chilled energon to get home.

The thought of going home made his spark start pulsing a little too quickly. The memories he'd left behind were still too raw, oozing through the gaps in his mind. Returning before he'd gotten them back under control would just scrape everything open again, and then he'd have nothing to look forward to but a miserable night and a big load of terrible defrag dreams.

Prowl dimmed his headlights, switched to thermal vision, and followed them.

🚔🎵

He'd needed to burn a little more than he expected in order to track them while getting out of the city, but it wasn't that big a deal. Once they hit open terrain, Prowl was able to stay much farther back without losing them. He'd stopped long enough to crack open a small cube and chug it down, resuming the silent chase the instant he'd stowed the empty container back in his trunk.

Twenty minutes later, the birds suddenly flew a twisting spiral down to the ground, waiting for... something. Rolling along as slowly and quietly as he could, Prowl settled himself up against one of the many formations dotting the landscape, letting the shadows cover him while he watched. It'd been one of his favorite tricks for catching criminals unaware before the fighting broke out; the war had only perfected it. He was no Mirage, that was for sure—wasn't even a good Jazz—but then, he didn't have to be. Most enemies weren't either, and the birds looked rather focused on a single empty point in front of them.

He soon understood why. A swirling, blue-green portal ripped open the air itself, permitting an unmistakable figure to step out into the night air. They'd been waiting to meet their host.

Sensing the presence of an opportunity, if not the nature of it, Prowl made a quick transformation, hoping the noise from the ground bridge would cover him, and sat down to watch.

He didn't have to wait long. Soundwave knelt, running delicate tendrils over their wingplates. At first, Prowl thought it might be a greeting, but the occasional lean in and flick of a data cable suggested he was actually checking them for damage and bits of debris. Strange thing to do all the way out here, when they had perfectly serviceable wash racks in their apartment, but what did he know about how hosts treated their flyi—

Soundwave stepped back, and in the space of a spark's pulse, Laserbeak and Buzzsaw were airborne, shooting into the sky and forcing Prowl to look up to see them. He quickly snapped his gaze back to Soundwave, just in time to watch him follow suit, already transformed in the space of time Prowl hadn't been watching.

Oh. Flying drills. That—made a lot of sense, actually. Their sneaking and investigating skills wouldn't be the only ones Soundwave wanted to keep in top form, and it'd be hard to perform such drills in the city without someone seeing. Jets like Skywarp and Thundercracker didn't so much mind, but they weren't Soundwave, were they?

Prowl felt a stab of guilt, peeping in on them, but didn't move. It'd been ages since the last time he'd really seen any one of the three of them let loose.

And when they moved, they _moved_. Prowl could call up the numbers on Soundwave's maximum speeds—he had stats on a great many Decepticons, all acquired during the war—but he hadn't _remembered._ It was like knowing that amethyst was purple, but not how the color shifted under a cold, white light or in the shadows of one's fingers. There was a whole world of difference between what he'e learned and what he now saw, vision no longer clouded by laser fire, smoke, or targeting crosshairs, and it'd started spinning so fast Prowl felt like he was going to fall off and float away.

None of them were traditional flight models; that much became obvious as they spun breakneck spirals, showing off all sides of their frames. Even Soundwave, who bore _some_ similarity to planes, was oddly proportioned and far more light in construction than them, practically all wing. The Autobots didn't have anyone who shared it, and Prowl couldn't think of any other Decepticons who'd chosen it either. Soundwave was, to his knowledge, the only one on all of Cybertron who looked like this—and it wasn't even a Cybertronian design. He'd picked it up on Earth, of all places—from the _humans!_ —and he hadn't changed it upon returning home.

Prowl hadn't thought about that before.

He surprised himself by popping a minigeode into his mouth as they shot off in straight lines, rolling until their wings strained and forced them to level off again. When did he pull the box out? He couldn't remember.

...Well, if he was settling in, he might as well eat the chilled semi-gels first. They'd go bad soon if he didn't, and he hated wasting fuel. They hadn't all lived on the edge of starvation for as long as they had just for him to go around getting sloppy. And semi-gels were sticky. He'd want that Zero Point Punch to wash them down with. It felt appropriate; this was a fantastic show.

Soundwave transformed and fell toward the ground headfirst, arms wrapped one across his front and one behind his back, all beautifully sharp points and twisting lines. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw sped past and then beneath him, shooting out the opposite side and splitting into a V; Soundwave transformed as they passed and pulled himself up, speeding a short ways over the ground before tilting back into the sky.

Prowl's spark pulsed faster, pouring excess energy into his circuits.

It wasn't entirely out of anxiety.

🚔🎵

Prowl waited until their exhaustion began to show before transforming and creeping back toward the city, warmed by a tank full of quality fuel and slightly dazed by everything he'd seen that night.

🚔🎵

Of the three of them, Laserbeak had the best vision.

He pulled a silly loop-the-loop while Soundwave and Buzzsaw set off on a lazy race toward a distant hill, watching from the corner of his visor as a car slid out of the shadows and disappeared.

Then he sped off.

That hill was the best perch in the entire area. Like Pit was he letting either of them claim it.

🚔🎵

It occurred to Prowl, as he struggled to make the holoprojector pick up anything better than 500 channels' worth of different degrees and patterns of static, that he could always try to _schedule_ a meeting with Soundwave. It would cut out most of the wait and allow him to ensure he had Soundwave's complete attention—or as much of it as a mech like Soundwave could spare at any given moment.

That, and it'd give him something else to do while he waited for the receiver to begin functioning again. He'd planned on spending some time seated in his recliner and watching another batch of old human murder mystery broadcasts. (They were much harder to solve, due to his lack of Earth knowledge, and therefore far more engaging and challenging than anything currently being produced on Cybertron.) With that out of the picture, his main options were to work on the Ramhorn investigation or the ticket problem, and he didn't think himself ready to go back to the investigation just yet. Another day. Maybe two.

The screen quieted, began to even out, rolled twice, and went straight back to static.

Right. Time to comm.

...Prowl did not have any idea what Soundwave's personal frequency was.

Fortunately—or not, depending on the situation and one's personal opinion of the mech, which, for Prowl, tended to be "No, thank you"—he did know Ratbat's. 

Ratbat accepted the connection almost immediately. "Speaking," he said. "Do tell me there is something more entertaining than a network failure at the core of this call."

Ah. So it wasn't just his receiver. That was something of a comfort, though it meant Prowl would have to comb through message boards and other feeds for the evening news.

Ugh. Comment sections.

"I take it Soundwave will be busier than usual today," Prowl said. If that was true, he'd have no chance of getting transferred—not that he'd try asking.

"Quite," Ratbat chirped, sounding far too happy about it. "Tomorrow, too. And as I don't recall seeing 'play messenger bot' listed as one of my many duties during his absence, I'm afraid you'll have to live with disappointment."

"No, no," Prowl replied, thinking fast. He could still get something out of this call other than a smarmy dismissal if he played his cards well. Maybe he could use it as a clue about what to try or where to go next. "That's fine. Can you spare a moment?"

Ratbat liked being the center of attention. "...Perhaps. To what end?"

"You saved me a few days' work on Doubledealer." Technically, it'd been Rumble, and by extension, Soundwave's whole group, but wording it the way he had _might_ inspire Ratbat to be more cooperative. _Might._ If Ratbat wasn't in one of those moods where he resented being stuck with Soundwave and the other symbiotes as his only allies after all of his previous betrayals. "I wanted to repay that."

Ratbat's laughter had never been a pleasant sound. It'd only gotten worse after he'd scanned his bat-like alt mode on an alien planet while hiding from Shockwave, becoming a high-pitched, squeaking cackle. "You can't afford the things I enjoy."

"Probably not," Prowl admitted. "What about the others? Something they can do, somewhere they'd like to go." He heard Ratbat mumbling something to himself on the other end, but not what it was. Not promising. Ratbat was much safer and easier to deal with when he wasn't hiding his thoughts. "You'd get credit for the ideas."

That seemed to do it. Ratbat began with an "I _suppose,_ " and then started throwing out ideas, one or two per minicon—a ticket to that new flying course for Laserbeak, a training dummy for Frenzy, claw trimmers and rubber caps for Ravage. (Prowl ignored that last one.)

By the time Ratbat reached the end of the list, Prowl had noticed one very important omission. "And Soundwave?"

"Oh, there's no need for _that._ You wouldn't know the artists he collects—all off-world types, very expensive to import."

"I understand." Prowl tried again. "No new activities he'd like to try?"

"With whom?"

That was a good question. Soundwave hadn't made many friends in the Decepticon ranks, what with his blackmailing and spying and refusal to tolerate rampant idiocy or take part in unproductive socializing. There were his minicons, of course, and Shockwave had been content to let Soundwave take up the position as the liason between Iacon, Kaon, and the Predacon colonies Shockwave had decided to stay and serve. They'd always gotten on decently.

But Shockwave rarely pulled his head out of his scientific experiments or studies, and Prowl couldn't name anyone else known for interacting with Soundwave outside work hours.

"All right. I'll see what I can do."

"So will we," Ratbat said, disconnecting the comm.

Judgmental glitch.

Prowl shook his head. Looked like he'd be going with his old standby: playing fullstasis against the program's AI until recharge. 

🚔🎵

Prowl jolted awake and upright, old senses honed by one too many nasty encounters during the war screaming that he was in mortal danger, but couldn't immediately identify why. As far as he could see, no objects had been disturbed and no one was in the room with him. He couldn't smell anything, or hear anything, and he certainly didn't taste anything worse than stale intake lubricants.

He frowned and pulled a blaster out of a hidden compartment in his berth.

If he'd ever in his life regretted something he'd done as swiftly as that, he couldn't have identified what it was. Massive claws and piercing yellow optics appeared at the edge of his berth a split second before an unexpected weight slammed into his chest, causing him to drop the blaster and smashing him flat on his back again. _"Oof—!"_

Ravage hissed, ears pinned back, and dug his front claws in. Prowl took the tiny, glowing blue beads that popped up around their tips as a warning to keep quiet, and did just that, biting back his own pained hiss. Ravage was surprisingly heavy for such a small and graceful mech.

Or maybe that was just his impending death talking.

Prowl held himself as motionless as he could as Ravage poked his nose up against Prowl's throat cabling, fang-lined jaws slightly parted, and began sniffing his way down Prowl's frame. He had no idea what Ravage was looking for, but he didn't dare ask. Ravage had maimed mechs for smaller offenses than that.

After a couple of minutes, Ravage drifted from smelling Prowl's right side over to his nearby arm, ears flicking and optics slitting. Then, twisting to get into a better position—Prowl felt a rush of relief at the withdrawal of one paw, only to flinch when it dug into the metal of a door instead—he jammed his snout under Prowl's arm. It forced Prowl to roll a couple of feet away from the berth. Prowl did not protest.

He heard and felt one last long, deep inhalation against the door—and then Ravage was backing up again, satisfied with whatever he'd found. "Tomorrow, Soundwave goes to hear Powerchord and Feedback," he growled, sitting up straight. He'd wrapped his tail around his paws; the tip _tick-tick_ ed against the metal of Prowl's berth.

Prowl propped himself up on his elbows, relieved. Hiding his claws from view was one of two reliable signals that Ravage wasn't planning on posing a danger to the mechs in his immediate vicinity. (Yet. Idiotic or uncooperative behavior could easily change his mind.)

The other sign was that Ravage had fallen asleep. Prowl was not going to see that sign tonight.

Ravage sent him a building description— _The Chro Bar; Cryotek, Proprietor_ —and address. "You will go too."

"Okay." What else could Prowl have said that would let him get through this in one piece? Besides, this was exactly the opportunity for which he'd been waiting. He opened the message, scanning the details. "What time?"

"Any, before dawn. He likes them. He will stay." The end of Ravage's tail lifted just high enough to uncover one paw's worth of claws before settling back on the berth. "Do not forget."

"I won't," Prowl said, nodding.

"Good." Ravage watched him a moment longer, gave the air between them one last good sniffing, and then twisted to leap off the berth. "Open the door. This building's ducts are badly maintained."

"Duly noted." Prowl swung his legs over the side of the berth, stretched, and got up to do as he'd been told. It wasn't like he'd be able to go back to recharge after this anyway.

🚔🎵

Prowl couldn't have been more relieved to see the lack of a long line outside _The Chro Bar_ 's front doors. He'd _hoped_ that arriving early in the night would reduce the time he needed to spend waiting with a bunch of mechs who'd spend the entire time gossiping about his unexpected appearance at their favorite haunt, but this was beyond his wildest dreams. Nothing at all like the message boards he'd checked during his lost recharge hours had suggested.

"A life-changing experience," they'd said. "Popularity increasing by leaps and bounds," they'd said. "Well known for their ability to—"

Fill up... a venue...

The reason nobody was standing _outside,_ it turned out, was because everyone was already _inside._ Prowl couldn't see an occupancy limit sign anywhere, but he suspected Cryotek was on the very edge of hitting the number printed on it, whatever it was—if he hadn't already gone over it by accident. Adding to the absurdity of the situation was one simple fact: _The musicians hadn't even arrived yet._

Prowl's doors flapped twice while he tried to figure out whether they'd be better protected by spreading flat or clapping together behind his back. In the end, he pinned them together _and_ raised them as high as they'd go without hurting him, hoping that would be enough to keep them from getting crunched by inattentive patrons. With that problem more or less solved, he pressed his arms together to further shrink himself down and patiently made his way through the crowd, trying to catch a glimpse of a familiar crest or data cable through the gaps between the surrounding frames as he walked a weaving pattern.

He eventually located Soundwave seated one spot away from the end of the bar, visor tilted toward the ceiling in what was either contentment or a desperate search for relief from the presence of so many minds. Prowl felt inclined to guess that it was the former; Soundwave sat leaned back on his stool with one arm hanging down and the other resting bent on the bar behind him, a heel caught on the ring just above its base, seemingly quite comfortable. Prowl had never seen him be so... _casual,_ before. Satisfaction looked good on him.

Prowl's gaze finally slid to the spots to either side of him.

Stranger on Soundwave's left. Frenzy on the right. He'd missed his chance. _Again._ And he had no idea how long it would take before he'd get another—

He froze as Frenzy glanced in his direction.

Frenzy threw him a quick wink, and then turned his attention back to the scene in front of himself. Prowl didn't know what he was looking at, if not the sea of afts and strong backs blocking his line of sight—Frenzy's height didn't exactly make it easy for him to see the stage over the crowd.

Apparently, Frenzy came to the same conclusion a couple of minutes later, sliding off his chair in silence and heading towards Prowl. Soundwave didn't even twitch, his gaze still fixed on the same point on the ceiling.

He grinned and nudged Prowl in the knee as he turned to make his way toward the front of the crowd. The soft _ding_ of a private comm alert went off inside Prowl's head.

_Saved you a seat. Better hurry up or some loser's gonna take it. - F_

He didn't have to send it twice. Prowl moved to take Frenzy's place, hurrying the first few strides and then slowing to a purposeful walk once he was sure nobody would be beating him there.

For a hot second, he wondered if Soundwave had drifted into recharge despite the noise of the bar. It was now the only explanation that made any sense when taking into account Soundwave's powerful sense of hearing and unusual telepathic abilities. Soundwave hadn't sat up to watch Prowl approach, and he didn't seem too inclined to start now that Prowl had filled the empty space next to him either. He hadn't so much as _budged._

That was a problem. Prowl didn't want to wake him—as a workaholic himself, he knew the value of a good rest—but he also didn't want to give up now that he'd come so close to finally being able to hand over the damn ticket. He'd been trying to do that since he first found out what he had. And it was clear to him that Ravage knew he had it now; nothing good could come of returning home with it.

It was worse than that, now that he thought about it. He was seated at the bar, not standing in the crowd. He'd be expected to buy something to drink in order to stay where he was. (Even Soundwave had one sitting next to him, though he hadn't touched it.)

Tempting as it had rapidly become, Prowl was not in a mood for high grade. He'd need to get back home after this, and he didn't like driving with high grade in his systems even with his fuel intake moderation chip active. If he was at home, within walking distance, or planning on knocking out at Jazz's for the night after an evening spent conversing about this or that with bottles of good engex in hand? Sure. A bar at least a twenty-five minute drive from his apartment? No.

And he still didn't like wasting fuel.

Prowl glanced at Soundwave. Maybe if...

He spread his doors and, reaching behind himself to the opposite side, pulled out the ticket.

A data cable immediately shot out of Soundwave's chest, snatching it from his grip. Prowl let go at once, visor bright with shock at the sheer intensity of the indignation slicing across the boundaries between their minds at just the barest touch of the cable's tendrils.

Soundwave sat up and slowly turned his seat, pushing against the ground with a foot, until he was facing Prowl.

Every last mech in their vicinity found something else to look at as quickly as they could. Even Cryotek hustled back to the far end of the bar, having decided the extra shanix were not worth interrupting Soundwave's reaction to whatever it was Prowl had done to hack him off.

Prowl forced himself to maintain a firm grip on his calm. As fearsome as Soundwave's wrath was in the moment, he had to remember that he'd been expecting a reaction like this. Scorponok had told him in no uncertain terms that Soundwave hated the ticket's existence. He'd decided that presenting it to Soundwave in person was the right thing to do, which meant he'd also decided that he could handle whatever happened as a result of his actions. By cowering now, he'd be implying he didn't really believe those things.

"Wait. Listen," he said, raising both hands chest high. "Three minutes. Just three. Give me that."

Soundwave dropped his chin, staring intently. No other part of him moved, however, so Prowl took that as an agreement to let him explain himself and jumped right into it.

"I'm not trying to cash that in. It shouldn't _exist._ You never consented to be involved. Anyone trying to use it would be committing a violation of your fundamental rights as a Cybertronian."

Soundwave lifted his head again, now tilting it to one side as Prowl spoke. Prowl kept going, keeping his voice far steadier than any part of him felt inside.

"I won it in a game of cyberpoker—it's been making its way around. I don't want to keep it, and I refuse to put it back into circulation." He gestured toward Soundwave's chest. "I thought you'd enjoy destroying it."

Soundwave slowly tilted his head in the opposite direction, examining Prowl from a different angle.

"It wasn't supposed to take this long," Prowl said, frowning. "You're just... difficult to reach."

For the next couple of minutes, neither of them spoke. Soundwave simply stared at Prowl, and Prowl sat there staring right back, wondering whether or not he was free to leave. Would it offend Soundwave if he tried? He definitely needed some extra recharge after Ravage's scare, and he couldn't think of anything else here requiring his attention. He'd said his piece and successfully transferred ownership of the ticket. That was all he'd come to the bar to do.

Soundwave's data cable abruptly came back to life. It snapped open, dropping the ticket into one of his hands. He crushed it in his grip the instant it hit his palm; copper creaked and enamel cracked as it crumpled, spilling a few colorful flakes onto the floor.

Prowl's visor locked on to the display, following Soundwave's hand as the mech tucked the ruined ticket into a subspace pocket. He suddenly felt very thankful that Soundwave appeared to have accepted his explanation. It didn't look as though he would have enjoyed the alternative.

Soundwave offered him a small bow of gratitude and pushed himself back around, once again settling into the position he'd been in when Prowl first spotted him. He looked even more at ease now, as if all his joints had received a fresh oiling. Prowl took it as confirmation that he'd been right earlier about Soundwave feeling contented.

The thought flooded Prowl's lines with a similar sensation. He let it.

He slid off his stool and headed toward the edge of the crowd, hoping he could make it out before the band showed up and mechs got rowdy. He liked the kind of music Powerchord and Feedback produced; it was the elbows to the face he did not.

Something soft and flexible snagged him by the upper arm and held tight, slithering around until it had added two more loops. He didn't need to look down, already able to guess what it was, so he looked back instead. The same alert from earlier chimed a gentle _ding_.

 _Tomorrow,_ said the note in his inbox. _Work break. Prowl's company: welcome._

He'd included a map marked with a dot over his office and the code for its door lock.

Prowl didn't manage to recharge that night either.

🚔🎵

"Hound!" Jazz's face lit up now that he saw who was on the other end of the line. "Doing my call early today?"

"Sorry, mech. I was actually trying to get hold of Prowl—"

"Have _you_ got the wrong frequency," Jazz interrupted, chuckling.

Hound squinted at him, and then snorted, picking up where he'd been cut off. "But he isn't answering his comms. Is he at your place today?"

" _My_ place? Nah." He tilted his chair back until he'd balanced it on two legs, using the table in front of him and the tip of his foot to rock himself back and forth without falling. He grinned. "But I know whose place he _is._ "

Hound's optics went wide. "It worked?"

"Can't say I know anybody _else_ eating lunch with Soundwave. It gets better—you heard about Smokescreen and Hot Rod yet?"

A low, impressed whistle. He hadn't, but he was sure he'd get all the details from Mirage during the next call. "Have you considered switching careers from musician to matchmaker?"

Jazz waved a hand, dismissing the notion. "It's no fun if everybody _knows_ you're up to something."

"What about them? You think they'll find out?"

" _Are you kidding me?_ " Jazz dropped his foot and tipped forward, letting the chair thud back onto all four legs. "Soundwave kept track of _every bot who ever owned that ticket,_ and I've been dragging 'em all to my game since our little blue buddy asked for help hooking up his Boss. They'll bust my aft by tomorrow morning. I'm a dead mech walking."

"Maybe. You said they're having lunch together?"

"Mm-hmm."

Hound smiled. "Then I don't think they'll mind."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About the flyers: In a world with people like Soundwave in it, would you really trust that every message you send or video you see is secure and untouched? Some bots turn to printed foil sheets for things that shouldn't or don't need to be preserved. Lightweight; hackproof; easy to stack, stash away, or crumple up... and edible! Eating the evidence has never been so fun.
> 
> About the ticket: The original owner was probably who you think it is, but for unusual reasons. Soundwave does hate the ticket, but it's a useful test of character and a self-solving problem/source of entertainment, as most bots are either too scared of him or easily discouraged to keep it for long.


End file.
